


Mirror, Mirror

by Maverocknroll



Series: Notorious [4]
Category: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Genre: #bobsaysshipem, Established Relationship, Humor, M/M, References to Past Child Abuse, body-swapping, cannibalizing part of the plot of Road of the Patriarch, entreri contemplating murder, jarlaxle has no shame, jarlaxle openly flirting with himself, sassmasters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 02:03:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17377475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maverocknroll/pseuds/Maverocknroll
Summary: After defeating the dracolich, Entreri and Jarlaxle have earned too much attention to go back to life as usual. Being caught between the suspicion of King Gareth and the ire of the Citadel of Assassins is bad enough, but when a magical mishap causes them to switch bodies, the situation goes from "dangerous" to "disaster".Of course, this doesn't stop Jarlaxle from trying to make the best of the situation...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this follows the beginning of _Road of the Patriarch_ , then takes a sharp left turn into AU territory. There is Plot and Character Development, but ngl, this one turns into, like, 90% banter.
> 
> I am having waaaay too much fun writing this one, so consider yourself forewarned.

Bloodstone Village was a quaint little town Artemis Entreri couldn’t wait to leave.

The town’s solitary tavern was proportionately small, a blazing fire warding off the early winter chill, and a heavy glare was enough to clear a path for the bar as Entreri shook the ice from his hood.

“What would ye like?” the barmaid asked in a tired voice that said she hardly cared.

“ _Bwahaha!_ ”

Entreri grimaced at the sound of Athrogate’s laughter, the ale-emboldened dwarf somehow louder and more obnoxious than usual, even from the other side of the tavern. “Peace and quiet,” he grumbled.

She snorted. “Wouldn’t we all?”

“A glass of wine, and another mug of your finest ale, please!” Jarlaxle chirruped, appearing at Entreri’s side as though from air, his hand a warm weight on Entreri’s shoulder. He tossed a glance back at the guffawing—and belching—dwarf and the foam dripping from his beard. “…make that two ales. And hello, _mal’ai_. You missed quite the dice game, I’m afraid!”

Entreri answered with an unenthusiastic grunt, but his scowl didn’t quite hold when Jarlaxle pressed a kiss to his cheek, almost as an afterthought.

“Let me guess,” Entreri drawled, “Athrogate won the last round, just enough to leave him with a sense of victory so you can entice him into another game later, despite the fact that you walked away with most of the winnings?”

“What can I say?” Jarlaxle asked innocently. “Lady Luck is fickle.”

“As are drow,” Artemis said with some amusement, bad mood thawing alongside the ice on his boots.

“Well, I do so hate to be predictable,” Jarlaxle purred, slipping an arm around Artemis’ neck and pulling at an earring with his teeth.

“Or subtle,” Entreri grumbled, not quite hiding a shiver but managing to swat away the roaming fingers of Jarlaxle’s other hand.

The barmaid set Jarlaxle’s drink order in front of them, looking somehow even less impressed, though a wink and a pair of coins from Jarlaxle brought a smile to her face.

“Learned anything yet?” Entreri asked, voice pitched low.

“That our dwarf friend has a surprisingly high tolerance for alcohol, and yes, that is by dwarf standards.”

With another glance back, Entreri counted ten empty mugs in front of the dwarf. “Helpful,” he drawled.

“Expensive,” Jarlaxle sighed, reaching for his wine glass and taking a long sip.

“At this rate, it might be cheaper to just flash him a little leg.”

Jarlaxle chuffed. “Honestly, _mal’ai_ , if I thought that would work, I would have already done so.”

“Maybe try after a few more drinks.”

“This is as helpful as you’re going to be, isn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t think flashing _my_ leg is going to help.”

Jarlaxle smirked. “Who knows? He does seem to prefer that his lovers be on the hairier side.”

Entreri grimaced, stealing one of the mugs meant for Athrogate and hoping a few swigs would banish that mental image. “I don’t want to know how you know that.”

“He told me all about it around five drinks in,” Jarlaxle replied with a grimace.

Entreri hummed. “Imagine what he’ll tell you after fifteen.”

Jarlaxle gave him a plaintive look.

“And yes,” Entreri assured him, “this is as helpful as I’m going to be.”

Jarlaxle groaned, resting his weight dramatically against Entreri, who let him for the moment, ignoring the annoying poke of that annoying hat in his cheek. “Join us?” Jarlaxle entreated the next moment, pulling away to gather up the other mug.

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine without me.”

Entreri ushered him on with a smirk, Jarlaxle’s unconvincing scowl saying he would pay for that later, and he was still smiling when he turned back to face the barmaid, who was watching them both with a raised eyebrow. He cleared his throat and wrestled his expression back into something more befitting a deadly (former) assassin.

Entreri picked a seat in the back, close enough to the fire to feel its heat but staying hidden in the flickering shadows it cast. From here, he could watch the rest of the room, could count the eyes that paused on Jarlaxle and Athrogate, could assess who was a threat and who was simply curious. Between Athrogate’s loud belching and Jarlaxle’s loud wardrobe, Entreri had expected to go unnoticed, so his hackles went up the moment he spotted a pudgy man making his way for his corner.

Entreri pretended not to notice, only sweeping his gaze around when the man slid into the seat across from him. “State your business and be gone.”

“Or you will leave me dead on the floor?” the man asked, but his cocky grin shriveled when all Entreri did was stare at him. His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Knellict would take exception.”

Ah. So this was it. They had met Knellict—or rather, a projection of Knellict—on the ride back from the castle construct. He had appeared on behalf of Damara’s Citadel of Assassins, just to let them know how… _displeased_ he was with the deaths of Canthan and Ellery, two agents who had been killed inside the castle, dead at Jarlaxle and Entreri’s hands.

Entreri cut a glance across the room to Jarlaxle, catching his companion’s eye. Jarlaxle had been plying Athrogate with drinks to find out more about this very man.

“I’m here for him, I am,” the pudgy man in front of him babbled on. “Knellict, that is.” He puffed himself up as though just the mention of the archmage was enough to bring him courage. “Ain’t no one be wanting a fight with Knellict.”

“‘Ain’t no one be wanting’ a babbling idiot spitting in his drink, either, and yet here we are. That problem, at least, has a simple solution.” He pulled out his jeweled dagger and idly spun it, point-down, on the table, looking across at the man and making sure he got the message. “Did you have some information for me or not?”

“A-a job,” the man said, followed by another heavy swallow, his eyes watching the gleam of light off the spinning dagger. “Tonight. For yerself and just yerself. A merchant named Beneghast has come afoul of Knellict…”

Anger was a tightening pressure at Entreri’s temples. He’d fled north with Jarlaxle to escape the life he’d built in Calimport, the life of an assassin, an empty life that had been his only option as a child on the street. And here was this fool, trying to pull him into that same life in another country, far away. Entreri wondered bitterly just how far his past would chase him.

The man told him of the assignment as though his agreement were a foregone conclusion, and Entreri listened carefully, silently, to the details, aware that these were Knellict’s terms for peace. Or for a certain kind of peace, anyway.

“And where is this, exactly?” Entreri said, interrupting the man mid-word.

It took a moment for the messenger to stop sputtering, to collect and extract himself from whatever script he had been mentally reading through. “Wall’s Around.”

“Wall’s Around,” Entreri repeated, not bothering to keep the contempt from his voice. “In Heliogabalus? And when do you expect this to be done, exactly?”

“Within the hour.”

Entreri laughed. Heliogabalus was a two-day ride away.

The pudgy man reached for his belt, and instinct had Entreri’s hand snapping out, grabbing the wrist of the hand still on the table and pinning it.

“I-I have something for you!” the messenger blurted as Entreri’s dagger flashed again, this time aimed for his splayed hand. “To… to help you! A-A peace offering from Knellict!”

Entreri could feel the man quaking, could see the sweat beading on his forehead. He stared at him a moment, dagger still poised in his hand. The back of his neck prickled, and he could feel the weight of Jarlaxle’s gaze, the purple moving in the periphery of his vision. “Slowly,” he growled.

The man flapped his head in an exaggerated nod, then carefully, slowly, slipped a wand from out of his belt and laid it gingerly upon the table. Entreri eyed it a moment more before finally letting the man go, dropping his hand—and the dagger in it—to the table.

“A Wand of Teleport,” the man explained, voice still holding a tremor. “Two charges. One to get you there, one to get you back. You will never be suspected, because you won’t even be there.”

Entreri just stared at him until the man squirmed.

“Knellict is a man of impressive means,” he blathered. The pressure against Entreri’s temples only tightened. “Wall’s Around,” the man said one more time before he slipped away.

Entreri’s jaw tightened until it ached, but he slid the wand inside his bracer. It wasn’t until Jarlaxle slipped into the seat he’d left that he finally looked up again.

“Who was that?” Jarlaxle asked, staring at Entreri as though trying to read his thoughts.

“No one,” Entreri said, lying automatically. He paused then, considering whether he should tell Jarlaxle more, only to decide that, no, this decision needed to be his and only his. “No one of consequence. I will be back in an hour.”

Jarlaxle frowned, clearly aware that Entreri was hiding something. “We have somewhere to be in an hour,” he reminded his partner.

“I know. And I will be back by then.”

Entreri rose to his feet, but Jarlaxle stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Artemis,” he started to protest, only for the name to turn into a hitch of breath when Artemis slid the backs of his fingers up Jarlaxle’s cheek to caress the curve of his ear. That was cheating, Artemis knew, but it was worth it to feel Jarlaxle arch like a cat into the touch.

“An hour,” he said, as much apology as statement before slipping out the door.

 

Later that evening, Jarlaxle sauntered through the crowd for the table of honor, two glasses of wine in hand and a smile on his lips, his eyes on the handsome, newly-inaugurated Knight of the Order. Enchanted lights floated through the Great Hall like will-o’-wisps, and Jarlaxle imagined it was like walking among the stars. Their golden light flattered the knight’s skin and caught in his ink-black hair, and Jarlaxle rather enjoyed the romance of it.

“Is this seat taken?” Jarlaxle asked, voice a low purr as he slipped into the seat next to the knight.

The man eyed him askance. “What would you do if I said yes?”

Jarlaxle slid the second glass of wine in front of him with a coy smile, admiring the man’s fine cheekbones and intense gaze. “I would say you would be missing out on fine wine and finer company. I can’t say I’ve ever shared a glass of wine with a Knight of the Order before!” He took his hat off to fan himself with it dramatically, fluttering his eyelashes.

His companion rolled his eyes, managing a stiff and vaguely unsettling smile for the well-wishers passing by the table. “You are enjoying this too much.”

Jarlaxle hid a smirk behind a delicate sip of wine. “On the contrary, Artemis—excuse me, _Sir_ Artemis!—I would say I’m enjoying this just the right amount!”

Artemis pinned him with a glare, and Jarlaxle’s face contorted before he gave in to the giggles bubbling up from his chest. Those giggles gave way to snorting laughter the longer Artemis scowled at him.

“Shut up.”

“But you should feel honored, _Sir Artemis the Dragonslayer_!” Laughter made the words shake.

Entreri grimaced. “This farce has nothing to do with me, and you know it.”

“Still,” said Jarlaxle, leaning an elbow on the back of Entreri’s chair, “free drinks at every bar, free passage to wherever you wish. You have to enjoy the perks of the honor King Gareth has bestowed upon you!”

“I don’t ‘have’ to do anything,” Entreri growled.

“Except sit there and look pretty, you mean.” Jarlaxle slid a hand up to curl long fingers into the hair at his nape, the pads of his fingers massaging Artemis’ neck. Artemis’ eyelids fluttered closed as he leaned into his touch. “Have I mentioned how dashing you look, by the way?”

“Many times,” Entreri grumbled, shifting uncomfortably. The long but fitted coat with silver stitching was the first non-offensive article of clothing Jarlaxle had bought him, but it still was not the sort of thing he would wear on a regular basis. It was much too tight in the shoulders, no matter how much Jarlaxle seemed to enjoy the way it showed them off.

Jarlaxle’s smirk curled higher. “You truly do not like being the center of attention, do you?”

Entreri shot him a wry look. “Being noticed did not generally help in my line of work back in Calimport.”

“Well, it helps now!” Jarlaxle said, cheerfully raising his glass.

“Hardly,” Entreri scoffed, eyes scanning the crowd. Assessing threats, Jarlaxle realized, and perhaps checking for potential exits. “We have made new enemies recently, or have you already forgotten that?”

“The Citadel?” Jarlaxle prompted, and Entreri shot him a reproachful look that told him to be careful. The Citadel of Assassins was a well-known and well-feared organization in Damara, one that did not have the love of its paladin king. “Oh, I would not consider them enemies! Merely friends we have not yet gotten to know!”

“Friends who would likely greet us with a knife in the back,” Entreri drawled.

“I am drow,” Jarlaxle said with a shrug. “You just described nearly all of my friends.”

“Are you certain that’s by virtue of being drow or by virtue of being you?”

Jarlaxle laughed. “You worry too much, _mal’ai_!”

“I recall you saying similar words right before I had to fight a dracolich.”

“Yes, and now we’ve been recognized for our courage, and you have received a knighthood!” Jarlaxle gestured around grandly, aware of just how many eyes were upon them, aware that they were a novelty, a pair of dragonslaying outsiders, one a Calishite from the “exotic” south, the other a drow.

“Exactly. I was right to be worried.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, taking Artemis’ hand in his and lifting it to his lips to kiss his knuckles. The fondness in his smile made Artemis’ face heat.

“Where did you go earlier?” he asked, twining his fingers with Artemis’, enjoying the heat of his skin and admiring his strong fingers.

“Out,” Artemis said, expression shuttering the way it had back in the tavern earlier.

“Where?” Jarlaxle asked, pausing to pluck a grape from his plate. He rolled it around his fingers before plopping it into his mouth, making a show of how casual the question pretended to be.

“To get away from badgering questions.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, but there was something sharp under the sound.

After a pause, Entreri added, “I simply took a walk.”

“Then why is there blood under your fingernails?”

That made Entreri pause, darting a look down at their joined hands.

“You know,” Jarlaxle said when Entreri didn’t immediately answer. “Back in Vaasa, you lectured me rather soundly—and rightly—on how on a partnership should involve an exchange of information.” He arched one white eyebrow, certain Artemis understood what he was intimating.

Entreri’s lips pressed thin, eyes turning inward.

“So what was it?” Jarlaxle asked again.

Entreri gave him a long look, his thumb tracing the knuckles of Jarlaxle’s hand in his. “A job offer,” he said before blowing out a sigh and finally taking a sip of his wine. “I turned it down.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sending this out with little proofreading, since it's likely the only time I'll be at a computer for the rest of the weekend. I'm in the middle of a family emergency, so uh. Yeah. I'll... respond to your lovely comments on Chapter One when things quiet down.

 “Blue.”

Entreri barely managed the word around Jarlaxle’s tongue, and they fumbled through the door like a four-legged beast getting tangled in its own limbs. Above the doorway, the dragon statuette’s eyes glowed blue before going dark, but it was quickly forgotten in the wake of hot hands and hotter breath, in the slam of the door and the slam of Artemis’ back against it.

_Sir_ Artemis and his other dragon-slaying companions had earned free drinks at the tavern near their apartment, and Jarlaxle had insisted on another, rowdier celebration now that they were back home, which was now, he hoped, leading to a celebration of a completely different kind.

Artemis was surprisingly pliant after a drinks while Jarlaxle was less-surprisingly daring after more than that, slipping a thigh between Artemis’ legs as he controlled the kiss. As Jarlaxle settled between Artemis’ legs, he couldn’t help admitting that he liked the feel of this. Artemis yielded so beautifully, and Jarlaxle would love to see him yield in this, to let Jarlaxle take him to new heights of pleasure. But a roll of his hips was all it took to make him stiffen, breathing a touch ragged as his body coiled tight, ready to kick him off any moment.

Jarlaxle kissed his cheek in an apology before sliding down Artemis’ body to better make his intent known. By the time he mouthed at Artemis’ bulge through his pants, Artemis’ body was coiled tight with desire instead.

“Oh! Hold on.”

Artemis’ eyes fluttered back open, and he didn’t register the words until he registered the heat of Jarlaxle’s mouth moving away. He swore under his breath, shaking the fog from his head and looking down to find Jarlaxle staggering to his feet and rummaging in his hat.

“What are you…?”

“I have something for you. Shh. Wait.”

It occurred to Artemis that this was the first time he’d ever seen Jarlaxle this close to tipsy, and he marveled at the slightest slurring in his words, at the slide of his voice into a Drow accent Artemis didn’t even know he had.

“Aha!” Jarlaxle crowed, withdrawing his hand and holding out a ring with a smile too guileless to be trusted.

“What is this?” Entreri asked, eyes narrowing. He would deny the Calishite rumble that had wormed its way into his own voice. He’d had enough wine for his body to feel warm and loose, a state usually only Jarlaxle’s body could bring him to, but he was still sober enough to be wary of drow bearing gifts, particularly this drow.

“A ring. I am certain you are familiar with the concept.” Jarlaxle giggled. “For your _finger_. Well…” He paused, tilting his head, internally debating that idea before shaking his head. “No. Just your finger.”

Entreri gave him a flat look and made no move to take the ring.

Jarlaxle sighed and held it closer to his face, close enough to make Artemis’ eyes cross. “Do you recognize it?”

“I recognize that it is a ring, as you so helpfully pointed out.”

“ _Whose_ ring?”

Entreri frowned. He’d recognized it the moment Jarlaxle had held it up. Its red gem was distinctive, and it had looked lovely on Arrayan’s finger.

“I have already told you I have no interest in that nonsense,” Entreri said, waving a hand at the ring. “If you are injured in battle, you will have to live with it on your own until I can get to you and vice versa. Assuming, of course, that I am not the person who stabbed you in the first place.”

“As fond as I am of your _stabbing_ ,” Jarlaxle replied with the requisite wink, “that is not what I had in mind. I had some alterations made, which you would notice if you would _put the damn thing on_.”

He brandished it more emphatically in front of Artemis’ crinkling nose. Entreri took it cautiously with a narrow-eyed look.

“And yes, I have the other one, before you ask.” Jarlaxle waggled the fingers of his left hand in front of Artemis’ face, where the red gem glimmered.

“I’m not putting it on until you tell me what ‘alterations’ you made.”

Jarlaxle clicked his tongue. “Always so distrustful.”

“It’s kept me alive,” Artemis drawled.

Jarlaxle shook his head and sighed dramatically, but the look he gave Artemis was fond. “It establishes a similar connection between wearers, only we would share… impressions, not injuries. If you are injured, for instance, I would know it. I would also know how badly you were hurt and where. So I still wouldn’t recommend stabbing me, unless you want to know what it is like to be stabbed yourself.”

Entreri felt the heat rush to his face at the double meaning there.

“I fail to see how this would be helpful,” Artemis muttered, even as he slipped the ring onto his finger. “It sounds like it would be a distraction.”

“The point is that it will let me know if you are in need of aid and vice versa,” Jarlaxle answered primly. “I am certain you will get used to it, just as you grew used to the ring in your ear.”

Artemis resisted the urge to pull at the ring in question, the earring that granted him darkvision like a drow. “It is distracting,” he said again. “If you are hurt in battle, yes, I will know, but I may not be of much help if the blow distracts me.”

“You are determined to complain about this, aren’t you?” Jarlaxle asked, and Artemis narrowed his eyes at the smile that crept over his lips. The drow sauntered back into his space, wearing that Look that made him shiver, a look that promised pleasure, and his body still remembered the heat of Jarlaxle’s against it moments before.

“Perhaps,” he said, intent on those smirking lips.

“Let me let you in on a little secret, Artemis,” Jarlaxle purred, those lips finding his ear. Artemis’ pulse kicked up at the proximity, and Artemis wanted to hate how quickly his body responded to the smug drow. “That’s not the only reason I invested in the rings, and it’s certainly not why I’m giving it to you now.” He took Artemis’ hand and pressed it unsubtly into his crotch.

Artemis sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the slide and squeeze of a hand as though someone were touching _him_.

“Y…you… _Really_?” He sounded more breathless than indignant.

“Really,” Jarlaxle said, and Artemis could hear the smile in his voice. His teeth tugged at Artemis’ earring, but Jarlaxle was the one who shivered. “I want you to feel everything you do to me.”

Jarlaxle’s voice went straight to Artemis’ groin, and Artemis squeezed and rubbed the growing hardness through the fabric of Jarlaxle’s pants, wringing a sound of pleasure from them both. Right now, that sounded good, that sounded _really_ good, but there was an uncertain knot growing somewhere in his stomach.

He wasn’t sure if he pulled or was pulled, but soon there a mattress under his—no, _Jarlaxle’s_ —back and a hand down his— _Jarlaxle’s—_ pants. He felt like his skin was on inside-out, the double overlay of sensations making him light-headed.

“Gods,” he panted against Jarlaxle’s throat, and that was odd, feeling the scrape of stubble on that end.

“Slowly, _ssin’urn_ ,” Jarlaxle murmured, his own touch gentle, almost careful, as his hands worked their way under Artemis’ shirt. And Artemis saw the wisdom in that once he’d gathered his wits about him, aware that the dueling sensations were well on their way towards bringing him to a very confused climax. He let Jarlaxle pull him up into a kiss, let Jarlaxle dictate the pace, rearranging their limbs so Jarlaxle could kick off his pants. Artemis gasped against Jarlaxle’s lips, feeling the caress of a warm hand as though he were touching himself.

“ _Ji veir, ussta ssin’urn Artemis_ ,” Jarlaxle murmured, rocking up into his hand. “I want—” His words choked off into moans as Artemis stroked over him. His hands slid down to Artemis’ ass, pulling him into him. “ _Usstan ssinssrin dos_ —!”

Artemis was proud of the moments he could overwhelm Jarlaxle into forgetting what language he was speaking, but he was past words and understanding himself. His world was reduced to Want, to the heat between them, as he reached down slowly to press a finger in—

Artemis jerked back, a strangled sound in his throat. There was a pressure in his skull and a dagger in his hand, his breathing ragged as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.

“Artemis? Artemis, come back to me.”

Worry and guilt crashed into Artemis’ chest, but they seemed to come from outside of himself. He shook his head to clear it, before tearing off the ring. The overload of sensory input softened to normal levels.

The garish purple hat was the first thing that made sense, the first thing that let him know that the drow on his bed was _his_ drow. And that was ridiculous, really, that Jarlaxle was still wearing the hat but not his pants. Jarlaxle stared at him like he didn’t dare to blink. The rush of cold fear had counteracted the warm buzz of the drinks. “Are you all right?”

“What were you thinking?” he croaked, jerking back when Jarlaxle’s hand twitched towards him, and he felt the crushing pain of that too. “You know that I… I can’t…” His knuckles were white around his dagger.

“I wasn’t,” Jarlaxle admitted.

“Liar,” Artemis growled. “You have no right.”

“I know. But, Artemis—”

Artemis marched up to his side of the bed. “ _If_ I decide I need help with this, it will be on my terms. _Do you understand_?” He was aware of the tense way Jarlaxle leaned away from him, eyes flicking to the dagger he’d forgotten was still in his hand. He tossed it aside with another growl, and some of the tension left Jarlaxle’s shoulders.

“You are right. Of course.” His voice was too measured, too much like he was trying to calm a wild animal, and the thought was like sandpaper over an exposed nerve. “But, Artemis… you _do_ realize that was you?”

Artemis stared down at him, uncomprehending.

“I… _did_ warn you before,” Jarlaxle told him gently, “that you would feel what I felt. That was your hand on _me_.”

Artemis felt ill.

“What do you need?” Jarlaxle asked.

“For you to leave,” Artemis grated out. When Jarlaxle’s face fell, he added, “Just… for an hour. Half an hour.”

“Of course.”

Jarlaxle pulled his pants back on and grabbed his cloak, pausing as though wanting to reach out to him but wisely letting himself out instead.

In the silence and the stillness, Artemis slumped to the floor and took the time to relearn how to breathe.

 

Outside, Jarlaxle’s breath misted in the air, and even with his ring’s protection against cold, the weather wasn’t exactly comfortable. It was a reminder, at least, of where he was. The caves of the Underdark were warm, always, but a humid sort of warm completely unlike Calimshan’s punishing desert. The bite of cold at his ears was not something he’d ever felt in Menzoberranzan, outside of a nasty spell.

Yet the shapes lurking in the shadows were more like home, even if these humans had a poor sense of how drow darkvision worked. He pretended not to notice the hunched figure in the alleyway, or the pair of “lovers” who’d passed by their building more than once, but it was as he counted the first two on the roof that he started to have concerns.

They’d all noticed him—they would have had to—but their focus was still on the apartment Jarlaxle shared with Entreri.

“Oh, Artemis, what did you do?” he murmured under his breath.

Once he cleared the sight of the would-be assassins—his count was up to six, now—Jarlaxle doubled back, toes pushing him off the ground as he activated his levitation, pulling himself onto the nearest roof.

More than six.

“What in the hells, Artemis,” he hissed, taking mental stock of his arsenal.

It occurred to him in a shiver of cold that neither of them had reset the traps, and that he’d left Artemis behind, shaken and vulnerable. His thumb twitched over the red-jeweled ring, spinning it idly as he wished Artemis had kept the damn thing on.

 

Entreri turned the ring over in his fingers, spinning it idly as he debated throwing it out the window. He’d tucked his ghosts away again for the moment, and now he sat, slumped in post-panic shakiness, trying to regain a sense of control.

Jarlaxle and his damn toys…

Was the ring, truly, a way to help them protect each other or another way for Jarlaxle to pry? It was his nature to doubt, and Jarlaxle’s nature to give him reason to. And yet, this whole thing, this mess of a partnership, went against those very natures. They were, the two of them, a constant contradiction.

Entreri squeezed the ring into his palm, a hand on his dagger before he even registered the subtle _thup_ of a crossbow dart into the window’s wood frame. His pulse kicked back up as his body coiled, eyes darting to his sword across the room first before peering more closely at the dart.

“Drow,” he muttered, recognizing the style.

Entreri bolted to his feet, snatching up his sword and slipping the ring onto his finger. Either another drow was launching an attack, or Jarlaxle was sending him a warning, and Entreri knew that, if it had been an attack, that bolt wouldn’t have ended up in the window frame.

He berated himself for his distraction as he grabbed the dragon statuette on his way out the door, hooking the chain around his dagger. He berated himself for drinking—something he never did before meeting Jarlaxle— and he berated himself for neglecting the traps, for allowing himself to be lured into a sense of safety.

He could guess what was outside that door.

He did not, however, guess that, the moment he opened the door, one of the would-be assassins would drop a fireball on his head.

 

There was a flash of light and heat, and then Jarlaxle was blinking the spots from his eyes and rubbing his stinging skin. He shook himself and wondered how he could have felt that fireball from a rooftop two buildings away.

He looked down at his ring and saw the gem pulse a glowing red. His breath hitched in a moment of panic, only to recall that Artemis wore another ring like his, a ring of fire protection. “I always love when you take my fashion advice, _mal’ai_ ,” Jarlaxle murmured. The stinging subsided, leaving an itchy sort of aggravation in its wake.

Peering into the street, it looked like the assassins hadn’t been expecting that either, the young woman with her “lover” shaking out her hand with a hiss. Jarlaxle licked his lips and tasted static in the air. He frowned, knowing exactly what that meant. “Wild magic,” he muttered. Exactly the kind of unpredictable they didn’t need.

Below, Entreri was a blur of motion, and Jarlaxle took a moment to mourn the smoldering remains of that beautiful, silver-stitched coat he’d convinced Artemis to wear again, just for him. The mage backed off with a screech, the man next to her unsheathing a sword with practiced ease but only barely intercepting Entreri’s swing in time to keep his head on his shoulders. There was another sizzle of magic and a hiss of pain from Entreri, a sting Jarlaxle could feel in his shoulder, but Entreri didn’t slow, pressing the man from all sides, constant motion making him a difficult target for the crossbowmen on the roof.

And those crossbowmen made the mistake of forgetting about Jarlaxle. With a flip of his cape, he was little more than a shadow, one that slid up behind the first crossbowman to slip a dagger between his ribs. A hand over his mouth silenced his dying gasp as Jarlaxle lowered him carefully to the rooftop.

The other crossbowman—a crossbow _woman_ —was more alert than her compatriot, noticing Jarlaxle and swinging her weapon around to point his way. But Jarlaxle was quicker on the draw, a dart from his handcrossbow catching her above the hip. The wound wasn’t mortal, but the fall from the roof was, once the dart’s sleeping poison took effect.

Jarlaxle peered over the edge of the roof to see the swordsman trip over the crumpled body, the final mistake that cost him his life as he caught Entreri’s dagger in the throat.

Jarlaxle alighted on the ground, his levitation softening the fall as he put himself between the wild mage and Artemis, the brooch in his cloak glowing as it absorbed the magic missiles she’d launched at Entreri.

Two more would-be assassins sprang out of the alley.

“What did you _do?_ ” Jarlaxle demanded as he eyed the mage and her flitting fingers, trying to identify whatever spell she was reaching for.

“Yell at me later!” Entreri called back, too distracted to sound annoyed.

Jarlaxle shook his head, launching a dagger at the mage. It bounced off an invisible shield but made her jump, interrupting the spell in a shower of sparks. Easily startled, that one, which could be good or bad when wild magic was involved.

“How did you manage to anger the entire city?” Jarlaxle hissed over his shoulder as he spotted another assassin creeping past the mage.

“Six people is not the entire city,” Entreri shot back amidst the clash of steel. “You’ve slept with more people in this city than this!”

“Well, not at the same time!” Jarlaxle huffed. “Well. Mostly.”

Jarlaxle didn’t need to look to know that Entreri was making a disgusted face.

“And certainly not recently,” Jarlaxle added distractedly as he took stock of their surroundings, his brooch catching the mage’s next volley. They’d been herded to the mouth of an alleyway, which the mage had ducked down, still needling Jarlaxle with simple spells just as he kept needling her with daggers, each trying to break through the other’s defenses. “Also, it’s more than six.”

“…what?”

“So again, I repeat: _what did you do?_ ”

Again, Artemis didn’t answer, and Jarlaxle winced at a sting in his shoulder, a phantom knife-wound that wasn’t actually his.

“Jarlaxle,” Entreri said before Jarlaxle could ask if he was all right.

“Yes, _ussta ssin’urn mal’ai_?”

“I— what did you just…? Never mind. Be ready to run.”

Jarlaxle knew why when he heard the _thunk_ of Artemis’ dagger over his head and looked up to see it stuck to the bottom of an overhang, the dragon statuette dangling from its pommel.

“White,” said Jarlaxle, remembering the fire the mage had called earlier. The statue’s eyes gleamed white, and that was their cue.

“Go, go, _go_!” Entreri shouted. He grabbed Jarlaxle by the arm and tugged him along, even though Jarlaxle was already sprinting into the alley, straight for the wide-eyed mage.

Her hands flashed as she backed away, stuttering through a spell, and Jarlaxle ran into her just as one of the assassins ran after them into the alley. Jarlaxle grabbed her hand to interrupt the spell she had been working on—one of entrapment, if he judged the sweep of her fingers correctly—and dragged her off-balance while, behind them, the dragon’s eyes glowed white and the alley erupted in a wash of cold and ice.

The mage and Entreri pulled him in opposite directions, the sparks of a misdirected spell to one side and the icy-fingered bite of a dragon’s breath behind him. With the sensory overlay of Entreri’s impressions on top of everything, it took all of Jarlaxle’s concentration just to remain upright, and for a moment, when the numbing cold washed over him, he wasn’t so sure he had.

At some point, Jarlaxle hit the ground, the ring of cold protection burning his finger with the strain, and he tore it off with a hiss. The ring on his next finger, the red-gemmed ring, throbbed, and he tore that off too, clutching them both in his fist.

All was still. The mage had been protected against missiles but not cold, and Jarlaxle looked up into her sightless eyes, her eyelashes turned to icicles. He glanced back to find the alleyway a tunnel of ice, the would-be assassins human-shaped stalagmites.

“You’re starting to turn into a one-trick pony, _abbil,_ ” Jarlaxle said, before frowning and clearing his throat. His voice had come out strange.

He stumbled to his feet, only to stagger into the wall, blaming his poor balance on the numbness in his extremities, but it wasn’t until he reached up to adjust the hat that wasn’t on his head that he realized something was terribly wrong.

“Jarlaxle,” a familiar voice said behind him, pitched towards panic, and Jarlaxle turned slowly, carefully, to see himself staring back while his own hand was still mapping out the hair that shouldn’t be on his head.

“What…?”

Jarlaxle held his right hand in front of his face, meaning to check his ring of mirror image, only to stare instead down at his skin. It was more brown than black, with the squarer, thicker knuckles of a human hand. His twin, still sitting in the ice, did the same, eyes wide and shoulders bunching like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. Which was Jarlaxle’s skin.

“…Artemis?” Jarlaxle ventured, and the other him looked up, only to wince, pushing the eyepatch away from his eye and letting it dangle uselessly against his cheek.

“What in the _hells_?” the other Jarlaxle hissed, expression twisting into a scowl that was familiar, if not on his own face.

“Yes, you’re Artemis,” Jarlaxle said to himself with a nod.

“Really?” Artemis spat. “Because right now it looks like _you’re_ Artemis! _What did you do?_ ”

“ _Me_?”

“You’re the one with the magic toys you only half understand!” He tried to push himself to his feet, nearly overbalancing the way Jarlaxle had, and Jarlaxle itched to fix the crooked angle of his hat. Artemis’—his—eyes crossed as he looked at the purple brim, only then seeming to realize he was wearing it. He tore it off his head with a hiss, tossing it into the ice, where Jarlaxle was quick to snatch it up.

“In case you didn’t notice,” Jarlaxle huffed, setting the hat on his head and enjoying the way Artemis twisted his face in horror, “the mage was a _wild_ mage. Whatever spell she was casting must have clashed with the new rings.”

“Take the hat off,” Artemis said with a grimace.

“Glad to see you’re focusing on the important thing here,” Jarlaxle drawled, and he wasn’t used to that, to the grittier quality of his voice and hearing it in a lower register.

“Gods, just— just take the damned hat off!” Entreri entreated, visibly squirming. “It doesn’t belong on my—! Stop making my face smirk like that! No!”

“Careful, Artemis, or you’ll give me frown lines.”

“I’ll give you more than that!” Artemis growled. He stopped speaking, cocking his head. “We need to leave.”

“I don’t hear anything,” Jarlaxle said, only to realize he didn’t have his elf hearing. “But… yes, yes we should.” He slipped his rings into the first pouch he found.

“Don’t touch the sword,” Artemis warned Jarlaxle as he went to retrieve Charon’s Claw. “Whether you look like me or not, just—”

“I know its nature, _abbil_ ,” Jarlaxle assured him as he skidded carefully down the alleyway to retrieve the dagger and statuette. He cursed when he found it encased in ice.

And now he could hear the clacking of armor and the clomping of heavy boots on the cobblestones.

“ _Mal’ai_? Toss me the Wand of Burning. The ebony wand in my right vest pocket.”

Entreri was one of few people who even knew that vest _had_ a pocket, let alone where it was, and he tossed the wand to Jarlaxle, who used it to melt the ice around Entreri’s dagger until he had the space to pull it free.

“You had to choose white,” Artemis grumbled behind him, grimacing as he limped along the wall, slipping Charon’s Claw into his belt, its red blade catching the light as it settled against his hip.

“It seemed a good idea at the time,” Jarlaxle said as he came up beside Artemis, slipping an arm around his waist as he tucked Entreri’s dagger and the statuette into Entreri’s belt. Jarlaxle blinked, wondering for a moment why his levitation wasn’t working. “Oh. Ha! The crest on the inside of my cloak.”

Entreri blinked. “What?”

“We need to…” Jarlaxle glanced back over his shoulder, chewing his lip. He sighed and reached across, taking hold of the crest, and they—or really, Artemis—started to float.

Jarlaxle squeaked as he started to slip, not used to gravity working so hard against him, but Entreri wrapped both arms around him in a tight grip, pulling him along.

“Not as much fun from that side, is it?” Entreri asked, and his savage smile was unsettling on Jarlaxle’s features.

“Well, the view’s better,” Jarlaxle retorted as they alighted on the rooftop, and he smoothed down his—Entreri’s—clothing like a bird smoothed its ruffled feathers. A glance at his companion showed him what Entreri’s eye-roll looked like on his features. “Though my former view _was_ rather enchanting before… this.” Jarlaxle held up the burnt edges of one sleeve. “Protection against blades and missiles, but I did not think to add an enchantment against fire.”

“It’s not like one article of clothing can be impervious to everything,” Entreri huffed, before pausing, looking contemplative. “Can it?”

“If so, _mal’ai,_ I—that is, _you_ —would be wearing it.”

The guards’ voices floated up to them from the street, and one or two started banging on doors, looking for someone to tell them what in the hells had happened here. Jarlaxle looked wistfully across the street, at their apartment.

“We can’t go home,” Entreri murmured, voicing Jarlaxle’s thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comments. <3 They made a fairly shitty week much brighter.

Even the candlelight stung, bright in a way that had Entreri squinting, and he wondered if fire had always burned that bright. He’d hoped the eyepatch would help dampen the brightness, but all it did was add color, outlining the wands and potion bottles on Brien’s shelves in shades of blue. Trying to squint through that only showed him the wall, the shelf and wands overlaid, and he realized he was seeing _through_ the wood.

Entreri flipped the eyepatch up again and rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. Looking up at… _himself_ —Jarlaxle, in his body—only made his growing headache worse. The hat was ridiculous on its own, but, as part of the coordinated ridiculousness that was Jarlaxle’s usual ensemble, it actually worked. Coupled with Entreri’s all-black attire, red feather curling around his neck, the hat was just embarrassing.

“Jarlaxle,” Entreri said, fighting to keep his voice measured. It was easier to be bothered by the hat than it was to focus on their situation. “I do not often beg, but I am begging you: take off the godsdamned hat.”

Jarlaxle turned to him with one arched eyebrow, arms folded and hip cocked in a pose Entreri would never. “Sorry,” he said, sounding anything but, and that was odd too, the way Jarlaxle kept trying to push his human voice into a higher register. “Human ears. I have a hard time hearing complaints.”

Entreri shot him a flat look. “If that were so, I would be a much happier person, particularly living with you.”

Brien delicately cleared his throat, drawing their attention. His red curls had grown back, joined now by an equally thick red beard, and some of the nervousness had relaxed around his eyes—or, well, at least it had before the two of them had turned to stare at him. He turned one of the red-gemmed rings over in his fingers.

“Wow, you… weren’t joking, were you,” he said, more to himself than to them. Brien shot a glance at the door to his workshop, where he’d hung a “closed” sign for the afternoon. “Your consciousnesses really have just… switched. It’s not an illusion or projection of any kind.”

“So it would appear,” Entreri drawled. “Can you fix it or not? I am going to assume you’re the one who… _tweaked_ the enchantment in the first place.” He made sure his glare communicated to Brien that he blamed him at least in part for this mess.

The way Brien squirmed said he got the message. “I’m not sure,” he said, eyeing Entreri carefully. “It was an unusual combination of things that led to this. The rings were still getting acclimated with you, and we have no idea what magic it reacted to.”

“The mage was casting the beginnings of a spell of imprisonment, I believe,” Jarlaxle said, leaning against the wall and drawing upon the observations he’d made over the decades of watching mages in battle. “But what spell actually came out is a mystery.”

Brien set down the ring on the counter with a soft click, and Entreri stared down at it without actually seeing it. It was like the world had turned concave, realizing he was trapped like this, in someone else’s body. He turned to pace, warring between panic and rage and trying to shove them both aside so he could _think_.

“Perhaps our patrons might have some insight,” he suggested, voice carefully measured. He turned to address Jarlaxle-in-his-body, grimacing again at the hat on his head.

Jarlaxle’s—his—eyes skittered to the side. “I do not think they will be of much assistance. In the meantime…” Jarlaxle pinned Entreri with a glare he wasn’t used to experiencing from this end. “Care to tell me _why_ there were assassins lying in wait outside of our apartment?”

Brien looked back and forth between them, staying carefully still.

This time it was Entreri who looked away, turning instead to peer at the neatly lined potion bottles, fixing the angle of one that had been turned askew. “I told you I turned down a job offer.”

“A job offer,” Jarlaxle repeated in a way that said he was puzzling it out. “…not with the Citadel?”

“Yes, with the Citadel,” Artemis replied, his borrowed voice not sounding quite as vitriolic as he’d aimed for. “They discerned my reputation in Calimport, and so they set up a test for me. I was to kill a merchant and make it look like someone else did it. There were agents there to watch and… ‘assist’ me, plus a pair of guards who had clearly been paid off.”

“…and I take it you failed the test in the most spectacular fashion?”

Entreri turned back to face him with a rictus smile that didn’t hide his anger. “I killed the guards and all the agents but one, whom I left battered and bloodied, and I let the merchant go free.”

Jarlaxle merely stared at him a moment, a flash of horror across his face quickly tightening to anger. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. “Artemis, sometimes I should like to strangle you.”

“And the rest of the time, I feel like strangling _you_ ,” came Entreri’s snarly answer. “It seems a constant in our relationship that one of us is feeling murderous at all times. Now that we’ve switched bodies, maybe we should save ourselves the trouble and buy a pair of nooses!”

“Charming.”

“I left Calimport,” Artemis snapped, stepping into Jarlaxle’s space and pretending he wasn’t disconcerted by yelling at his own face. “I left that life! You were very persistent in pointing out what an empty, waste of an existence it was! Would you have had me go back to it?”

“Not _permanently,_ but there are ways around that _that did not involve thumbing your nose at an entire assassin’s guild_!”

“If something dragged you back to Menzoberranzan, would you not fight it with your every breath?”

Jarlaxle fell silent, unsure how to answer. There was no escaping Menzoberranzan, and Jarlaxle was resigned to knowing that, one day, he would have to go back. That it was his own mouth asking the question just made him feel like he was playing the flute all over again.

“Not if it involves getting myself killed,” Jarlaxle said at length. “And now there’s a price on your head, isn’t there?”

Entreri scoffed. “Not a large one, if it drew in such amateurs.”

“Technically,” Brien said, cutting in cautiously, eyes on Jarlaxle, “that means the price is on _your_ head, isn’t it?”

Jarlaxle let his eyes fall shut as Entreri went still. “Well done, Artemis. Really.”

“Yes, forgive me for not foreseeing this,” Artemis replied with a sarcastic wave of his arm. “And I hope you,” he went on, narrowing a look in Brien’s direction, “have something more helpful to offer than ‘I don’t know’!”

Brien held up both hands defensively. “I don’t trade in miracles, J— Entreri!”

Entreri scowled, but before he could press Brien, Jarlaxle laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Then perhaps we should look for someone who does,” Jarlaxle suggested. “How is Lorica?”

Brien’s expression clouded, and he glanced back at the stairs. Entreri had seen her watching their approach through the window with dead eyes, her hair grayer than he remembered it being.

“In no condition to offer a ‘miracle’,” Brien said with a soft sigh. “She has lost faith in Talos and all the other gods.”

“Good,” Entreri growled. “The gods have no use for us, anyway. And I have no use for a priest,” he added with a pointed look at Jarlaxle, “except for target practice.”

“Stabbing people is not the best way to have them help you,” Jarlaxle drawled.

“No, but it’s a marvelous way to get some peace and quiet.”

“Unless you’re stabbing someone from the Citadel, you mean.”

Jarlaxle and Entreri traded glares.

“We should at least consider our options.”

“I have considered it. It is not an option.”

Jarlaxle exchanged an exasperated look with Brien but let the matter drop, electing to look into it on his own, once he and Artemis were safely ensconced.

“Has the wild magic otherwise affected the rings?” he asked.

“Hard to say,” Brien said with a shrug. “But they should be safe enough to wear.”

Entreri shot him an incredulous look. “I imagine you thought they were ‘safe enough’ before all this happened.”

“Forgive me for not foreseeing this,” Brien drawled, throwing Entreri’s words back at him. He shrank back a bit at Entreri’s scowl.

“Wild magic is impossible to predict,” Jarlaxle said as he picked up his ring. “Hence the name. What happened to us was simply the perfect combination of accidents and is unlikely to happen again.”

“Pity. If it happened again, we would be rid of this nonsense.”

Jarlaxle conceded the point with a nod. He picked up the other ring and offered it to Artemis with a raised eyebrow. When Artemis just glared back at him, Jarlaxle shrugged and pocketed it.

“We will need a place to lie low in the meantime,” Jarlaxle said, turning a hopeful look upon Brien.

And Brien knew why he’d gotten that look. “Lying low” was exactly what he and Lorica had needed to do and exactly why they had set up shop in a small village down the road instead of in Heliogabalus proper.

He blew out a sigh. “Fine. I’m sure we can make some room for you two. Just… just try not to upset Lorica any more than you need to.”

 

In the back storeroom, Jarlaxle and Entreri negotiated their belongings.

“I’m not wearing the hat,” Entreri said, though they both knew that he would.

“Artemis, so long as you look like me, you need to _be_ me, and vice versa. That means you need to wear a hat and a smile.” He beamed to demonstrate what he meant.

Entreri gave him a pained look before taking the hat off Jarlaxle’s head, and he supposed that was a relief of sorts, no longer needing to see his own head wearing that garish thing, despite the disconcerting view of seeing himself smile like that. He flipped the hat over in his hands, frowning when all he saw was purple fabric.

“You don’t think I’d let you keep all my toys?” Jarlaxle said, dangling a piece of black fabric from his finger, the extradimensional pocket he usually stored in his hat.

“Of course,” Entreri grumbled, reluctantly setting the hat on his head. “So now it’s just a normal eyesore.”

“Hardly.” Jarlaxle reached up to adjust the angle of the hat, taking a moment to admire his own features, even with the sullen look. “You still have the diatryma feather, and the brooch here will protect you from some magic.” He tapped the brooch at the front of the hat. “Speaking of protection, if I could have my ring of cold protection, please.”

“Why? You should already have one.” Entreri looked down at Jarlaxle’s right hand, only to find that ring missing.

“I am afraid the dragon may have overloaded it. Brien is looking into fixing it. But in the meantime…”

“But in the meantime, I will have to deal with the cold instead? No.”

“No, no. You’ll still have the bracelet. Oh! And I will certainly need my bracers.”

Entreri narrowed his eyes. “The bracelet?”

“Protection against Elements. Rather handy considering how often you change the dragon’s color on me.”

With a growl, Entreri tore off the ring and bracers.

“I may also need to keep your dagger for now.”

“What?” Entreri snapped.

“Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe wears an eyepatch and a most glorious hat. Artemis Entreri wears a jeweled dagger and a scowl. That is the way of things.”

“You can’t have both _your_ weapons _and my_ weapons!”

“No, no. You can keep the sword. I have an illusion, here…” Jarlaxle shoved his hand into the extradimensional pocket until his arm disappeared up past his elbow. It came back out holding a charm that he affixed to the scabbard on his belt. He took a moment to undo the scabbard and hand it over, gesturing for Entreri to put the sword inside.

With a narrowed look, Entreri obeyed, and Charon’s Claw seemed to melt and shift once it was sheathed, smoothing over to a nondescript basket hilt. Touching the hilt, his finger traced the ribs he could no longer see, ascertaining that it was, in fact, only an illusion.

“And you just so happened to have that?” Entreri asked, eyeing Jarlaxle as he buckled the sheathe onto the belt at his waist.

“Yes. You carry distinctive weapons. I suspected we might need to disguise one or both one day.”

“Do you have a similar disguise for your hat?” Entreri drawled.

He was surprised when Jarlaxle’s answer was, “Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Are you surprised? I have only survived this long by being prepared.” He offered Entreri a wink that was just wrong on his face. “Now turn, please. Let me see if there is anything else I need. Lift up the cloak.”

Entreri scooped the cloak up over one arm as he turned, throwing his other arm out wide sarcastically. “Anything else? No more wands tucked away into hidden pockets?”

“Not yet. Those pants really do flatter my ass, don’t they?”

“They— _really_?” Artemis growled before clearing his throat with a cough. Jarlaxle’s vocal chords were clearly not used to going that low.

“You say like you don’t know it perfectly well,” Jarlaxle replied, sounding smug. In Artemis’ voice.

Unfortunately, Artemis couldn’t argue with that. He let the cloak fall.

“No, no. Throw the cloak over one shoulder. Like this.” Jarlaxle reached up, tossing one side of the cloak over Entreri’s left shoulder, complementing the angle of his hat.

Artemis rolled his eyes as Jarlaxle fussed. “A cloak is meant to ward off the cold, not help me strike a pose.”

“A good cloak can do both, and you know I always have the best.”

“Of course.”

“Naturally that extends to my taste in partners.”

Entreri gave Jarlaxle a critical look, not trusting that too-innocent look on his own face. “You are not honestly flirting with me right now.”

Entreri watched a devilish smirk cross his own features with some fascination. There was something alluringly impish in that look, a look Entreri didn’t even know his face could make.

“Oh come on,” Jarlaxle said, stepping closer into Artemis’ space, close enough for him to see he needed a shave. “You can’t tell me you are not curious?”

“I am not curious. I am also clearly not as vain as you are. And stop biting your lip. It’s not sexy when it’s my own face!”

Entreri couldn’t decide what was more unsettling, the seductive look or the pout that followed the rejection.

“Very well,” Jarlaxle said with a heavy sigh. He cocked his head the way he did when he was struck by a particularly bad idea. “I wonder if there’s a mirror back here.”

“A mirror?” Entreri watched him warily as he started to rummage through Brien’s things, peering into the crates lining the shelves.

“Well, I might as well take advantage of the perks of wearing your body,” Jarlaxle replied, tossing a wink over his shoulder.

Entreri’s horror mounted when he realized what Jarlaxle meant. “No.”

“No?”

“You keep my body in those pants, dammit!”

“That could get messy.”

“Jarlaxle,” Entreri growled.

Jarlaxle huffed and turned to face him again, arms folded. “Why not? It’s nothing I haven’t seen—or licked—before!”

Entreri felt his face heat, his—Jarlaxle’s—skin tight and uncomfortable. “Because it’s _mine_.”

He watched his own brow smooth over in realization. “I see. Very well, _mal’ai_ , I would say I’ll keep my hands to myself, but you have both my hands and my self.”

“Then keep _my_ hands to—” Entreri realized that wasn’t any better. He rubbed the gathering tension in his forehead. “Never mind. Just… tell me we can fix this?”

Entreri watched his features soften, again in a way he didn’t know his features could. “There is little that magic can do that it cannot also undo,” Jarlaxle assured him. “It is simply a matter of discovering how and discovering who has the ability to do so.” His gaze slid to the side as he added, “To my great fortune and greater displeasure, I may know just the person to contact. For now, however, we need to focus on keeping ourselves alive. We need to figure out what, exactly, Knellict’s retribution is.”

Entreri knew that meant talking to a particular dwarf and groaned. “If he starts rhyming again, I may have to kill him.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Hopefully after this weekend I'll finally be able to catch up on replying to everyone's comments. <3 Thanks again, guys!

Entreri was not used to being the center of attention, certainly not when walking side-by-side with Jarlaxle, but all eyes swung to him when he walked into the tavern. They were regulars enough that they didn’t get more than the usual wary looks, and Entreri was mid-glare before he remembered to smile, greeting the room with a flourish of his hand. He ignored Jarlaxle’s snicker behind him.

Athrogate’s belch announced his presence from across the room. “Has he even left that table since we returned?” Entreri asked, lip curling in disgust.

“Likely not,” Jarlaxle said as the barmaid swept away another trayful of empty tankards. “Certainly not to bathe.” He slid his gaze back to Artemis, back to his companion looking clearly uncomfortable in his borrowed skin. “Remember to smile.”

Entreri offered him a smile that was the opposite of reassuring. “I’ll picture all the ways I’d like to kill you to keep up my good cheer.”

Jarlaxle patted him on the back. “That’s the spirit!”

Jarlaxle slipped away to the bar to order a round of drinks while Entreri made his way over to Athrogate’s table, his skin itching with the weight of the other patrons’ stares. Athrogate barked a laugh when he spotted “Jarlaxle”, setting down the turkey leg in his hand and wiping a sleeve across his greasy beard. Entreri fought to keep the look of distaste off his face.

“Well met again, my friend!” Entreri said, slipping into the seat across from him uninvited.

“Friends usually come with ale!”

“It’s already on its way.” He tipped his head at the bar, where he could see himself… smiling and chatting up the barmaid. He shook his head in exasperation, but Athrogate only noticed that “Entreri” was at the bar. “We have… had a rather eventful day and could use a drink ourselves.”

“Eventful night too, I wager, to go by the human icicles on yer front lawn.”

Entreri struggled to keep his smile friendly. “Heard about that, did you?” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Jarlaxle approach, a barmaid soon behind him with a platter of drinks.

“Whole city heared about that,” Athrogate said, sizing “Entreri” up as Jarlaxle sauntered over to take a seat. “Ye got a real pair o’ stones, drow, bringing ‘im here.”

Entreri tensed, but Athrogate seemed _amused_ by the observation.

“Why?” Entreri asked, suppressing the urge to fidget with the eyepatch. “You plan to collect on Knellict’s bounty?”

Athrogate threw his head back and guffawed. “Bounty’s hardly worth the effort to piss on,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. After a pause, he added, “And I didn’ say it were Knellict.”

 _Smile_ , Jarlaxle signed to him out of Athrogate’s line of sight, and irritation made his skin itch even more. Fine. He would smile.

“Oh, of course you didn’t!” Entreri said, unnecessarily dramatic, pressing a hand to his chest and waving the other hand out wide.

Jarlaxle gave him a strange look. Entreri just smiled.

“But… if the bounty were to go up…?” Entreri prompted, forcing a prissier quality into his voice. He watched Jarlaxle scrunch his face out of the corner of his eye.

Athrogate laughed again, his smile anything but friendly as he tilted his head at Jarlaxle. “Then it’d be his corpse I’d be pissing on.” He shrugged, took a long swig of his beer. “Nothin’ personal. I like ye. But I like ale more.” He punctuated this statement with a belch, then his face twisted strangely. “Gotta take a piss,” he said as he waddled to his feet, hiking his belt up over his waist.

As Athrogate lumbered away, Jarlaxle leaned into Entreri’s space. “I do not sound like that.”

Entreri offered him a half-shrug as he picked up his wine, almost daintily by the stem, sticking out his pinky. “Oh, yes, you do.”

“I do not! And I certainly do hold a glass like that!”

“You do now.” Entreri sipped unnecessarily loudly, smiling all the while.

Jarlaxle’s jaw was still open when Athrogate returned.

“And what’dye have to say about it?” Athrogate asked with a nod in what he thought was Entreri’s direction.

Jarlaxle closed his mouth and slouched back in his chair, pretending not to be watching “himself” as he twisted his face into the most sullen expression he could conjure. He just crossed his arms and offered a grunt in reply.

Entreri slowly turned his head to regard Jarlaxle’s performance. So that’s how it was going to be.

“My partner is a man of few words, as you know,” Entreri explained. “I like that about him. He knows when to stay quiet. Of course, that combined with a ruggedly handsome exterior and raw sexual prowess make him irresistible.” He fluttered his eyelashes at Jarlaxle, who he could see was biting his tongue to keep his expression neutral.

“Er,” said Athrogate, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “All right?”

“Of course,” Jarlaxle broke in, “my looks are nothing compared to Jarlaxle’s exquisite beauty.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Entreri sweetly replied. “You are being much too modest, Artemis.”

“Oh, hardly! As to sexual prowess, there are none who can match your experience and, dare I say it, _flexibility._ ”

“And yet, despite all my centuries of sleeping around, I must say that you are the best lover I’ve ever had!”

“Oh, am I really?”

“Indeed! You have ruined me for all others!”

“I’m… happy for ye both?” Athrogate said, eyeing the two of them.

“So you understand why I should like to keep him around?” Entreri asked him. “If he should be assassinated, I fear I will never be sexually satisfied again!”

Jarlaxle sighed and inched closer to Artemis, casually reaching up to caress his ear.

“And so you sh- shuh- s-should…” The touch to his ear was like a lightning bolt down his spine, and Artemis’ words stuttered to a stop as his head tilted and he arched in the touch. “Sh…” His fingernails bit into the table. “C-Cheating!” he finally gasped out, squirming as Jarlaxle’s fingers continued to rub in just the right way, sending more shivers of sensation down his spine.

Athrogate raised an eyebrow at them both.

“So what can you tell us about whoever put a price on my head?” Jarlaxle asked, his smirk wicked as he pretended not to notice what he was doing to his partner. “Who you never said was Knellict, of course.”

 

“I hate you. So much.”

Jarlaxle just laughed, noticing how stiffly Artemis was walking, trying to hide a reaction he knew too well. “Well, now you know how it feels, _mal’ai_ ,” he said, slipping an arm around Artemis’ waist and clicking his teeth next to a pointed ear. He felt him shiver.

“So much,” Artemis repeated in a growl. “And where are we going?”

Jarlaxle led him through the cramped back rooms of the tavern, subtly steering him into an empty room with a wash basin and barely room for much else. “Can you not guess?” Jarlaxle purred, and he liked the way Artemis’ voice vibrated deeper in his throat.

“Jarlaxle—” Artemis’ words cut off in a hitch of breath at the press of teeth against an ear that felt longer than it was. And he was still getting used to the differences there, to the subtle tonal shifts of everything around him, the need to sift through a larger amount of sensory data, but this… Artemis hadn’t been expecting this. “What’s—?”

A warm mouth closed around the tip of his ear, and Artemis found himself melting back into the body behind him, unsure when Jarlaxle had shifted there.

“Is that what I sound like from your end? Interesting.”

The words shivered around his ear, and the growl Artemis made didn’t quite come out a growl, not when the arm around his waist shifted, a hand sliding down to cup him through his pants. Artemis was glad Jarlaxle was at his back, though the scrape of stubble against the side of his neck was jarring.

“How do you walk around with these?” Artemis grumbled even as he tilted his head to give Jarlaxle better access to his ear, unaware of the way his hips were rocking up into Jarlaxle’s hand.

Jarlaxle chuckled. “You are simply not used to them. Sensations are strongest when they are new.” His mouth slid down to tug at Artemis’ earrings as his hand slid under the waistband of his pants, and Artemis gritted his teeth around a whine.

“This is… too strange,” Artemis choked out.

“What’s strange about it? I know what my body likes, and I like to bring you pleasure. I do wish I could hear you making these sounds with your own voice, however.”

Jarlaxle’s hand slid over him, skin rougher than he was used to but still lighting up a path of pleasure, and Artemis scrabbled behind him to hold onto Jarlaxle’s—his?—hip. He tried not to think about it, tried not to think about that hand wrapped around him being his, tried not to think about the hardness he could feel against his hip and how that was his as well.

“You are good at this, by the way,” Jarlaxle purred with a twist of his wrist, the breath at Artemis’ ear making him tremble. “Good with your hands, with your tongue.” Jarlaxle licked into the shell of his ear, and Artemis’ hips bucked. “You _have_ ruined me, _ussta xukuth,_ in ways you do not know…”

The pleasure sharpened to a fine edge at a strategic press of Jarlaxle’s thumb, the voice in Artemis’ throat foreign as he gritted his teeth against the sound. As his vision flared white and his hips jerked, the clinical, detached part of him noted that _this_ was the same for elves.

Those lips left his ear to smooth down his neck instead, the scrape of stubble a discomfort on more than a sensory level. Artemis shivered out a breath and leaned away from that contact before the twisting in his stomach could spill over into something worse, and Artemis reflected bitterly that his demons followed him no matter what skin he was wearing.

Jarlaxle stilled, a questioning sound in his throat, and that only highlighted the sense of Strange, the disconnect between learned comfort and reality.

“Stubble,” he clarified with a mumble.

Jarlaxle hummed, his arm resting loosely along Artemis’ waist again. “Attractive sandpaper, I always said.” There was the barest leading tone in his voice, an invitation to elaborate. Artemis could feel Jarlaxle’s eyes on him.

When Artemis said nothing, Jarlaxle hummed again and reached back into his bag of holding, one arm still wrapped around him.

“What are you doing?” Artemis asked, eyes narrowing, only to wince when that affected the focus of the eyepatch.

“Reminding you,” Jarlaxle said as he drew out a round mirror, releasing it to let it float in the air, “that it’s still just you and me here.”

Artemis looked at the mirror to see Jarlaxle’s eyes—eye—staring back, but so were his. It was a bit dizzying, seeing his own face but controlling another, but it was also a comfort. When Jarlaxle again kissed his neck, Artemis only saw himself, that sickening twist in his stomach gone.

“Strange,” Artemis murmured again, and strange too was seeing his habitual scowl on Jarlaxle’s delicate features.

But stranger yet was seeing how easily Jarlaxle could twist his features into a smile. “Strange is just another word for intriguing, _mal’ai_.”

Artemis let out an indelicate snort. “Trust me, that is not what people mean when they call you strange.”

“Oh, I think it is!”

“Then your command of Common is not nearly as good as you think it is, _mal’ai_ ,” Artemis rejoined, putting a mocking emphasis on the Drow word.

Jarlaxle chuckled, and in the stillness, Artemis was uncomfortably aware that Jarlaxle had not, er….

“Do I still need to keep your hands to myself, _ussta vallabha mal’ai_?”

Artemis would need to think of a word other than “strange”, but that was the only word that came to mind when he saw himself making puppy eyes at the mirror. “For now,” he said, just to side-step an actual answer. “There are assassins after us, remember? This is not the safest place to be exposed.”

Jarlaxle groaned in his ear, pressing his forehead to Artemis’ shoulder. “Sex camel.”

Artemis chuckled and reached back to pat one scruffy cheek. He looked down. “My pants are a mess,” he grumbled.

Jarlaxle laughed. “And so we find yet another use for this cloak,” he said as he stepped back, rolling the cloak down off Artemis’ shoulder so that he was completely covered.

 

“So it sounds like Knellict has turned you into a training exercise for the Citadels’ novices,” Jarlaxle said once they were again ensconced in Brien and Lorica’s home. The kitchen upstairs was cozy, which to Entreri was just another word for cramped, and even the little sunlight from the window was uncomfortably bright.

“I don’t think ‘training’ is the word if the novices end up dead,” Brien said from where he was restocking the shelves.

Entreri just pointed a thumb at him and nodded.

“An extermination program, then,” Jarlaxle amended. “To weed out the foolish. That’s truly the only explanation for so low a price. I am almost insulted on your behalf, _abbil._ Are you insulted?”

“I’m insulted the fool tried to drag me back into all of this,” Entreri muttered.

“I’m not certain Knellict is the fool in this situation,” Jarlaxle said, drawing a glare from Entreri.

“I am not having this argument again, Jarlaxle.”

Jarlaxle held up his hands palm-out in surrender.

“So what now?” Entreri asked, pushing up the eyepatch to rub his eye. He’d hung the hat over the back of his chair, and now the air was cold on his head.

“Now I’m hoping you didn’t bring assassins to _my_ doorstep,” Brien muttered. He just shrugged at Entreri’s scowl. “The Citadel of Assassins is a small army. You would need a small army to defeat them. My suggestion? Leave. Get out of their area of influence. You’re not exactly hurting for money. You could go anywhere.”

Jarlaxle waited for the comment, for Artemis to suggest that they go someplace warmer, so he was caught off-guard when Entreri simply growled, “No.”

“No?” Jarlaxle blinked.

“No. When I leave, it will be on my terms, not before.” Entreri locked eyes with Jarlaxle, adding, “ _Dos jal'yur inbal natha inlul hosse_.”

_You already have a small army._

Jarlaxle’s chair creaked as he sat back. The idea had already occurred to him, of course, but that was a delicate matter, made immeasurably more difficult by their current situation. “ _Kimmuriel_ does, you mean.”

“Is there a difference?”

“There is,” Jarlaxle said firmly. “He will not risk Bregan D’aerthe unless there is great potential benefit to the group, not for my personal desires, and that is by design. By _my_ design.”

“And you can’t possibly think of a way to negotiate a benefit for you both?”

The dry way Artemis asked said he already knew that Jarlaxle was plotting exactly that. Jarlaxle couldn’t help but smile.

“If I do, you realize that you would have to be the one to suggest it,” Jarlaxle pointed out, and he watched his own face slacken in horrified realization.

“But he’s a—!”

“I know. But you have the eyepatch, the whistle, and my face.”

“And I’m soon to have regrets, it seems,” Artemis muttered.

Jarlaxle suspected he would too. Artemis had many talents, but his negotiations usually came at the end of a dagger. He could well imagine the sort of disaster that would be.

“But let’s wait until we have a plan,” Jarlaxle suggested. “This is something that must be done _delicately_.” His next words were lost in a yawn. His body—his borrowed body—felt heavy and had been growing heavier throughout the morning. It took a while for that heaviness to register as tiredness. “And after I have taken some reverie.”

 _“_ Jarlaxle,” Artemis said, an odd quality to his voice. “Humans don’t take reverie.”

“…oh.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sleeplessness was not new to Entreri, but this odd, half-lucid dream state was. Jarlaxle had had to guide him, to help him calm his restless mind enough for his body to do the rest. And he was still aware of his body, of its weight, of the weight of another body pressed close to his, of the texture of the bedroll under his side, of the steady cadence of his own breath. His thoughts wandered into half-dreams—or were they memories?—visions layered over what he was actually seeing if he opened his eyes. It was worse, somehow, being almost-awake for his usual dreams, and he jumped at the brush of a hand that was not there, pulling himself out of his reverie.

Reality washed back over him in a flood of color. They were curled up on the floor of the cramped rooms above Brien’s shop, and that was familiar, an echo of a previous life where he’d been afraid sleeping in a bed would make him soft. Considering the warm of a familiar body behind him, he wondered what that version of him would think of him now.

He was used to the deep breathing of another body curled tight against him but not the scratch of stubble against his neck. A glance over his shoulder said that Jarlaxle had fallen asleep, though Entreri didn’t remember that. The height of the moon through the window said that hours had passed, and though time had seemed to drag on, apparently it had slipped by instead.

Incredibly disorienting. And Jarlaxle did that every night?

Yet Entreri had to admit it was more efficient. He was fully awake and recharged, yet still had half the night left. He bit back a bitter smile at that, thoughts floating briefly to Drizzt—only to decide that didn’t matter. Carefully, he slid out from under Jarlaxle’s arm and rose to his feet, then turned back to study the body on the bedroll.

Jarlaxle’s—that is, _his_ — hand curled into the spot still warm from his bedmate’s body, face smooth and serene in sleep. Not plagued by nightmares tonight, it seemed, and Entreri couldn’t resist a twist of envy. Even with all the wards Jarlaxle had on his person, his body was incredibly vulnerable like this, and the realization of just how much he relied on Jarlaxle to keep him safe, of just how often Jarlaxle saw him like this, was an uncomfortable one.

“Sleep well,” he murmured before slipping out into the night.

 

In Calimport, Entreri had been used to inciting fear, had been used to the cascade of glances when he passed on the streets, his jeweled dagger on display. He had been used to the crowds parting for him, to those glances shying away the moment he met them.

He was used to the fear. What he wasn’t used to was the revulsion or the way those stares hovered like arrows at his back. He walked quickly, his glare still enough to send people scrambling out of his way, but it was with a wash of relief that he made it to Wall’s Around, where the people were at least used to seeing the flashy drow.

The tinkle of the shop’s bell was Ilnezhara’s first warning that she had a guest, the widening of her eyes as she looked up from the counter saying Entreri had caught her off-guard. She straightened regally like a coiling snake, red hair cascading past her shoulders, her smile less friendly than he had expected.

“Good evening,” she said, coolly polite. “I was just about to close up the shop for the evening. I am afraid you will have to peruse our wares another time.”

“You know I’m not here for that,” Entreri said, not quite able to hide the menace in his tone, which drew a narrow-eyed look from Ilnezhara.

“Was I unclear the last time we spoke?” Ilnezhara said as she wrapped up the set of earrings she had just been admiring. “We no longer have need of your services at the present time, Jarlaxle. Go back to your human before his bed gets cold.”

Entreri let out a helpless laugh. “You can’t tell, can you?”

“Tell what?” Ilnezhara paused in putting away the bundle of cloth to give him a curious look.

“I had thought you’d be able to tell, the way you can see through illusions, but this isn’t an illusion, is it?”

“Speak plainly. I do not have the patience, Jarlaxle.”

“It’s Entreri.”

Ilnezhara shrugged, hands settling on her hips. “What is?”

“ _I_ am.”

Entreri had caught her off-guard a second time. “What do you mean?” Slowly she rounded the counter, eyes on Entreri with a sort of predator’s intensity that always made his skin prickle.

“Exactly what I said,” Entreri replied. The nerves that came from being trapped were chewing at his patience. “Do you know how to fix this?”

“What exactly is it that needs fixing?” Ilnezhara shot back. “This is no illusion, as you say.”

Entreri gritted his teeth. “We… switched. Somehow. Wild magic, Jarlaxle says.”

Ilnezhara raised an eyebrow. “Switched?”

“Yes.” Entreri eyed her. Her demeanor was off, colder than he was used to. Something must have happened between her and Jarlaxle. Was this why Jarlaxle was reluctant to go to her for help? “My… consciousness is in Jarlaxle’s body, and his is in mine.”

A smile twitched at Ilnezhara’s lips like she was fighting to suppress it.

“What?”

She shrugged innocently. “And here I thought you would be used to being inside Jarlaxle’s body.” At Entreri’s displeased look, she sighed. “Now I _know_ you are Entreri. Jarlaxle would have appreciated that joke.”

“Jarlaxle would have _made_ that joke. I spend enough time with him that I do not need a copy.”

Ilnezhara’s smirk canted up, turning sultry with a tilt of her head, but Entreri raised a hand before she could respond.

“And please don’t make a comment about all the things I could do with a copy of Jarlaxle.”

Ilnezhara cackled, leaning her hip against the counter. “But you are thinking it now, so my work here is done.”

“Can you fix this or not?”

Ilnezhara hesitated, gaze dropping to the side. “In a word? No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“Exactly what I said.” Entreri did not appreciate having his own words thrown back at him. “You should not even be here, Entreri. Or has Jarlaxle not told you?”

Entreri was too resigned to be angry. They were too good at keeping secrets from each other. “What did he do this time?”

“I imagine you already know. You were there at the castle, were you not? You know what he took?” Her eyes lit then with realization, and she straightened again, looking him over. “In fact… You say you have his body. Perhaps you also have his things?”

“Some of his things,” Entreri hedged, aware of a strange weight in his vest pocket that hadn’t been there before, an interdimensional pocket, responding to his thoughts. “His hat, for instance. He was rather insistent that I needed it to complete the ‘look’.”

“Don’t play coy, Entreri. It doesn’t suit you.”

“No, but it suits Jarlaxle, doesn’t it?”

Ilnezhara’s eyes narrowed, and there was that predatory look again.

And Entreri looked her right in the eye when he said, “He keeps his most treasured artifacts with him. Surely you know this.”

Lying to a dragon was likely not the smartest thing he had ever done, and if this ended with him being eaten, Entreri would haunt Jarlaxle’s—his?—body until the drow met an equally untimely end. Against his chest, one of Jarlaxle’s necklaces grew hot, burning against his skin. He allowed no reaction to show on his face even as he wondered what it was protecting him against.

When Ilnezhara continued to stare at him, Entreri took off Jarlaxle’s hat and showed her the plain inside. “Look. He took his toys with him. This hat is little more than a piece of fabric, just enough to keep up appearances.”

“And he is all about appearances,” Ilnezhara muttered, finally withdrawing from Entreri’s space. “Speaking of which, I am surprised you have not burned the hat.”

Entreri cleared his throat. “It is cold, and I am bald. Since I’m not the one who has to look at it, I can suffer its existence.”

“Mhmm,” she said, the tone of someone not convinced, eyes alight with mischief. That look twisted into one of regret the next moment. “You make dangerous enemies, Entreri.”

“I am hardly afraid of Knellict.”

“Perhaps you should be, but that is not whom I mean.”

Entreri frowned but tilted his head to indicate that he was listening.

“You have drawn the attention of King Gareth.”

Entreri raised an eyebrow. “A king who has made me a knight,” he drawled.

“A king who has lost a niece under suspicious circumstances,” Ilnezhara pointed out with a sharp look. “Despite where Ellery’s body—what was left of her body—was found, you and I both know it wasn’t Urshula the dracolich who killed her.”

“And so?” Entreri shrugged one shoulder. “Let them investigate. Perhaps they will find her killer, but so too will they find that she was a pawn for the Citadel of Assassins. I do not fear Knellict, and I do not fear King Gareth.”

“And now I know you to be the fool Jarlaxle often calls you,” she shot back. “And I had thought you the more sensible of the two!”

Entreri offered her a grim smile. “Perhaps the hat makes me more daring.”

She didn’t return that smile but shook her head, turning back to her shelves and pretending to look busy. “I cannot help you, Entreri. Now, as I have already said, I need to close up my shop. Good day.”

Entreri wasn’t about to argue with a dragon, emboldened by the hat or no. He slipped back out the door as though he had never been there.

 

Jarlaxle surfaced from a dream to find it was the dead of night, the moon fat and bright outside the window, and it took him a moment to remember where he was, _who_ he was. Waking from sleep was always disorienting, but elves generally only slept when they were ill or injured. All those wasted hours of rest, and Jarlaxle still felt groggy.

“You do this every night?” Jarlaxle asked the dark figure by the window, frowning when his voice came out craggy. He was beginning to understand Artemis’ general crankiness.

“When a certain drow isn’t keeping me up with his schemes.”

“Is ‘schemes’ what we are calling it now?” Jarlaxle asked with a wink, expecting to prompt another eyeroll from Artemis.

But the wink just made Artemis’ borrowed face twist. “You have no idea how strange it is, watching my face do that.”

Jarlaxle sat back on his elbows, blanket pooling around his hips. “No? Then offer me a saucy wink, and let’s see.”

Artemis’ nose crinkled as he stepped closer, moonlight outlining the edge of his hat and pointed ear. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re more attracted to me in this form than in my own. Except… no, wait, I _do_ know better, and you are.”

“Now, now, there’s no need for comparisons!” Jarlaxle sat up, stretching and yawning in a way he knew showed off Artemis’ lithe stomach and strong shoulders. “You know I appreciate your body and my own with equal devotion.” He gave Artemis a heavy-lidded look and bit his lip, ruffling the hair on his head because he knew just how tempting Artemis looked with sex-tousled hair.

To his amusement, Artemis’ eyes tracked every movement, though his face twisted like he wasn’t sure how to react. Or like he was conflicted by his reaction. Either way, Jarlaxle was intrigued.

“I’m not as vain as you are,” Artemis grumbled. “Trying to seduce me with my own body is not going to be successful.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“It’s not.”

“I could play with your ears some more.” Jarlaxle’s grin inched higher when he watched those ears twitch, Artemis’ gaze skittering away. He slithered to his feet, mindful of the difference in this body’s center of gravity, and closed the distance between them with a swagger in his step. “I think we both enjoyed that last time,” he added, leaning in to whisper the words in Artemis’ ear. He grinned when he saw Artemis shiver, head tilting instinctively to put his ear closer to Jarlaxle’s lips.

“I went to see Ilnezhara,” Artemis said in a rush, and Jarlaxle stilled.

“Oh?” he said, recovering a moment later. “Hoping to seduce her while she thought you were me? Terribly talented, isn’t she?”

“No!” Artemis blurted, only to grimace, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I wouldn’t know how ‘talented’ she is. I wanted to know if she or her sister could fix this.”

Jarlaxle frowned. “I already told you that would not work.”

“Yes, but not _why_ ,” Entreri hissed. “And are you mad? Antagonizing a pair of dragons over a relic?”

“A relic of great power,” Jarlaxle pointed out. “And I, personally, would feel safer with it out of any dragon’s hands.” He laid a hand over his heart in a bid for sincerity. “Claws. Whatever.”

Entreri was unimpressed. “You’d feel safer with it in your own claws, you mean.”

Jarlaxle shrugged as though it did not matter. “Same thing.”

“But you’ve forgotten one thing.”

Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I’m the one wearing your vest.”

Jarlaxle’s grin slipped, gaze darting to where he knew the invisible pocket to be, the pocket where he kept both phylacteries. “Surely you know it would be unwise t—”

“I did not give the phylactery to Ilnezhara, if that is your concern. But I considered it.”

Jarlaxle stepped back to give Artemis a measuring look, but the man had an unfairly good poker face no matter what face he was wearing. Jarlaxle’s eyes felt naked without the eyepatch.

“As… enlightening as it is, traipsing about as a color-blind drow,” Entreri said, “I would very much like to have my body back.”

“I will fix this, have no doubt. In the meantime, _ssin’urn_ …” Jarlaxle cocked his hip, thumbs hooking into the waistband of his pants to pull them low around his hipbones. “You know you can have this body anytime you like.”

Entreri just gave him a flat look. “Did you really just call your own body ‘ _ssin’urn_ ’?” He waved a hand in front of him. “Don’t answer. Of course you did. Now could you please stop making _my_ body act like a cat in heat?”

Jarlaxle widened his eyes in an expression of innocence that did not fit on his borrowed face. “Acting like what? I am simply trying to find a stance that is comfortable! I am unused to having such large…” He looked down, drawing Artemis’ gaze in the same direction. “…shoulders.” He grinned at Artemis’ sour look.

“I hate you so much.”

“You know, the more you say that, the less I believe you.” There was something almost fond on Jarlaxle’s borrowed face as he swayed closer, and that was strange to see too. All of it was strange, the way Jarlaxle puppeteered his face, his smiles broader, his eyes brighter, and it was more unsettling than Jarlaxle posing his half-naked body. It was a different sort of nakedness, he found, like seeing himself stripped of his own armor, armor he’d never learned to take off.

When a callused hand came up to caress his ear, Artemis shivered out a breath, leaning into the touch before he could stop himself.

“Where did your mind go just now?” Jarlaxle murmured.

“Mm? N… nowhere.” It was hard to focus when Jarlaxle gently pinched the edge of his ear, and his eyes fluttered shut.

Jarlaxle’s hum didn’t sound convinced, but he leaned in to kiss the soft spot below his ear. Even in his human body, Artemis was used to that gesture of affection, but he was not used to the drag and scrape of a beard against his neck. He jerked away before he could make sense of the reaction, rubbing at his neck as though it could get rid of the crawling sensation under his skin.

Jarlaxle did not follow his retreat, and Artemis looked back at him to see muted concern.

“You need to shave,” was all he said. The same necklace as before glowed hot again, and this time Artemis spared a glance down, disentangling Jarlaxle’s jewelry until he’d found the offender, the small whistle Jarlaxle kept on a silver chain.

Jarlaxle looked down at the whistle and blanched, eyes widening before snapping back up to Artemis’ face. “Kimmuriel.”

“What?”

“He’s calling you. Well, me, but you’re me. My men can’t find out — I have to go.”

“What?” Artemis said again, still holding the whistle.

“Blow the whistle to answer his call,” Jarlaxle said in a rush as he darted around, gathering up his bag of holding and Artemis’ dagger. “If we don’t, he’ll just barge in on his own. Tell him… Tell him you will need an audience with Gromph, but don’t tell him why. The less anyone in Menzoberranzan knows about this the better.” Jarlaxle paused to chew his lip while Artemis sputtered. “…no, you need the eyepatch,” he muttered to himself. “I will just have to keep my distance. Remember: you’re me.”

“You’re just—?”

Jarlaxle took Artemis by the shoulders. “Ask about Gromph. It will take time to secure an audience with him. Just deflect his questions for now, and remember to smile!”

“But—!” Artemis was too dumbfounded to dodge Jarlaxle’s kiss, and then the damnable drow-turned-human disappeared down the stairs.

The whistle burned against his hand, and now that he knew what it was, he could hear a faint whistling.

“What are you getting me into now?” Entreri muttered, glaring down at the whistle.

And Gromph? The drow archmage?

Could they truly trust him with this?

Internally cursing Jarlaxle, Entreri brought the whistle to his lips and blew, holding the note until the air sparked with magic. A portal rent the air, and out stepped Kimmuriel.

Entreri let the whistle fall to his chest, fingers itching to fidget with the eyepatch. He remembered to smile a moment later, though his cheeks protested the action. “It is good to see you, Kimmuriel, my friend!” he said in Drow, adopting Jarlaxle’s tone and body language, holding himself more openly, and trying not to gag. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

There was the spark of more magic as Kimmuriel reached into a pocket dimension and threw something at Entreri’s face. He caught it with one hand, his other dropping to grasp a dagger that was no longer at his waist, but when he saw the object Kimmuriel had thrown at him, Entreri had to fight not to react. “M— Entreri’s gauntlet.” He turned it over in his hands, thumb tracing the red stitching. It looked just like it had before it had been destroyed.

“It was not a cheap repair,” Kimmuriel said, crossing his arms, “but easier that than your… other request.”

Entreri continued to turn the gauntlet over in his hands, aware Kimmuriel was fishing for a reaction. “I see,” he said, though he didn’t.

Kimmuriel’s eyes narrowed. “‘I see’? That’s it? After your strong words on the matter the last time we spoke?”

“What else would you have me say?” Artemis asked, feeling woefully ill-equipped to be having this discussion, unsure what this discussion was even about. What had Jarlaxle and he argued about?

And still Kimmuriel stared with narrowed eyes, as though that alone could bore through the eyepatch protecting Artemis’ thoughts. “Are you well? You seem…”

“Seem?” Entreri prompted with an arched eyebrow.

“Flustered.”

Entreri masked his discomfort behind a winsome smile, an expression he knew well but had never felt from this side. “Well, your timing was not exactly the best. Let’s just say I was blowing Artemis’ whistle before I blew yours.” He completed the innuendo with a wink of his uncovered eye, aware of just how ridiculous that looked from the other side.

His comment had the desired effect. Kimmuriel’s face twisted into the barest sneer, and he didn’t press the issue. “I suppose I should thank you for sending the vermin away before answering my call, this time.”

Entreri smiled through the insult. “A little tense, Kimmuriel? Perhaps you need someone to actually ‘blow your whistle’. How long has it been for you?”

Kimmuriel just gave him a bland look. “Not all of us are slaves to our physical desires, Jarlaxle.”

That sounded uncomfortably close to something Entreri would have said not so long ago. “Oh, that long?” Entreri asked with mock concern.

Kimmuriel just continued to give him that unimpressed look.

“You should be careful. I hear if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

“Are you quite finished?”

“For now,” Entreri relented. “But I have another request for you.”

Kimmuriel visibly braced himself. “Yes?”

Entreri toyed with the gauntlet in his hands. “I would like to have an audience with Gromph at his earliest convenience.”

Kimmuriel’s expression turned miraculously more wooden. “Gromph.”

Entreri nodded. “Gromph.”

“If you are hoping _he_ will look into your earlier request, I will remind you that he is even less fond of humans than I am.”

Wonderful. Though that left Entreri wondering what that other request had been. “You do not need to remind me. This is for something different altogether.”

Kimmuriel arched an eyebrow and waited, but Entreri wasn’t about to elaborate.

“Was there anything else, Kimmuriel?”

“Just the usual update on Bregan D’aerthe.”

Entreri had no interest in ever seeing or hearing about Menzoberranzan again. “Ah. Can it wait? I am afraid I had some unfinished business I need to attend to.” He added another wink to make his meaning known and took some satisfaction in the way Kimmuriel’s face twisted in disgust. He slipped the gauntlet onto his hand just to feel its comforting weight.

Kimmuriel shrugged as though it hardly mattered. “It is relatively quiet at the moment, though I expect that will soon change.” He eyed the gauntlet on Entreri’s hand, then his gaze slipped to Charon’s Claw at Entreri’s waist. Entreri looked down out of the corner of his eye, making sure the illusion over its hilt was still in place. “Where are your bracers?”

Entreri flexed his fingers, approving of the give of the gauntlet’s material. “Entreri needs to borrow them for an… assignment,” he said with a casual smile. “I am hardly unarmed without them, as you know.”

Entreri kept smiling as Kimmuriel studied his face, and he waited for the drow to call his bluff.

“I suspect I do not wish to know,” Kimmuriel said at length, punctuating the thought with a heavy sigh. “Though you should be more leery of giving your own toys to _rivvil._ ”

Entreri was so used to the slur that he barely bristled at hearing it. “On the contrary, I rather enjoy sharing my ‘toys’ with Artemis.” He was growing rather tired of winking, but he could clearly picture the self-satisfied look Jarlaxle would wear after a joke like that. “Speaking of toys,” he added as a thought occurred to him. Kimmuriel visibly braced himself again. “Do you still have Agatha’s Mask?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's Day ~~and Io Lupercalia!~~
> 
> I'm gonna be away at a Latin-speaking Nerd Conference all weekend, so the chapter's going up now. I'm also currently embroiled in a [Jartemis-themed Poetry Slam](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/497006) in honor of the holiday, if you want more amusement.

 

“You really have to shave _every day_?” Jarlaxle asked Brien, slumped over the counter with both hands scratching the growing fluff at the corners of his jaw. The scratching only seemed to make it worse, and he wanted to peel back his skin.

“Depends on the person, and the look you’re going for.” Brien shrugged. “But it certainly seems overdue for you. Don’t you usually shave your head?”

“ _Shave_ it? No, no. There is an ointment for that. And it doesn’t _itch_ this horrendously.”

Brien shook his head and ignored him in favor of his mortar and pestle, though the smirk teasing the corner of his lips said Jarlaxle would get no sympathy from him. Jarlaxle watched the steady grind of the pestle, the twisting of Brien’s hand, and the motion quickly became suggestive, placing a different kind of itch under his skin. Jarlaxle pulled his stare away to peer out the window instead, determinedly not thinking about Artemis’ “pestle” or the heat pooling between his hips.

A couple of customers came and went, bleary-eyed couriers who needed to be on the road before dawn, and Jarlaxle enjoyed the novelty of going unnoticed in plain sight. He looked up at the sound of footsteps on the stairs and smiled when he saw Artemis… before he stopped to realize that he was, in fact, seeing _Artemis_.

“ _What_?” Jarlaxle nearly toppled the stool he’d been sitting on. He looked down at his own hand, chagrined to find it still human, but then he considered whom Artemis had been talking to and put the pieces together. He huffed a laugh and went back to scratching his jaw. “Agatha’s Mask?”

Artemis hooked a thumb under his jaw and pulled, and the illusion peeled away, revealing the borrowed face and wry grin beneath. Two lies that made a truth.

“That is an impressive illusion,” Brien said, eyes lingering on the wooden mask in Artemis’ hand.

“And a most useful one,” Artemis said, holding it aloft before dropping it onto the counter in front of Jarlaxle. With the hand wearing his gauntlet. They locked eyes for a moment, and Jarlaxle wished he could read his face, wished he could tell if Artemis were pleased or annoyed that Jarlaxle had given his glove to Kimmuriel to fix. “For the next time you need to meet with Kimmuriel, if we do not have a more permanent solution before then.”

“Indeed, though I can certainly think of a use for the mask now,” Jarlaxle said with that crooked smile that promised trouble. “Why don’t you put it back on, Artemis, and I will fetch a mirror?”

“No.”

“Then _I_ will wear it and fetch a mirror.”

This time Artemis hesitated before saying, “No.”

Brien paused, pestle in hand, to scrunch his face at Jarlaxle. “Really?”

Jarlaxle shrugged innocently. “Am I the only one with any sort of imagination?”

“No, just the one with the most perverse one,” Artemis said, standing next to Jarlaxle’s perch and leaning his elbows against the counter. “Is that all you ever think about?”

“It is, when no other outlet presents itself,” Jarlaxle drawled.

A bell tinkled in the doorframe, and a heavy-cloaked figure brought in a rush of cold before the door swung shut again. It took Jarlaxle a moment to recognize Lorica, who had been avoiding them, whether by accident or by design, since they’d arrived. She still held herself with a warrior’s confidence, the pair of rabbits slung over her shoulder saying she’d just returned from a successful hunting trip, but the lifelessness behind her eyes was still there. Artemis had carried that same look once, and the memory of those days was a pang in Jarlaxle’s chest.

“If your plan is to lay low,” she said as shedding her cloak bared that horrible scar around her throat, “perhaps the drow should not be at the front of the shop.”

“Good morning to you too, Lorica,” Entreri sneered.

Lorica matched his glare as she thumped her kills onto the counter.

Jarlaxle cleared his throat. “She has a point, _mal’ai_. Particular people will know to look for your face, but mine is… rather unforgettable.”

“Your wardrobe is unforgettable,” Entreri muttered, but he scooped up the mask again.

“Why, thank you!”

Entreri rolled his eyes and padded back up the stairs, and Jarlaxle took the opportunity to admire himself from this angle.

Jarlaxle turned back to Lorica to find her scrutinizing his face.

“You need a shave,” she said.

Jarlaxle sighed.

 

Entreri held a knife to Jarlaxle’s throat, so delicate against his skin, and Jarlaxle supposed there was a metaphor to be found here if he cared to look. The blade scraped over the soft skin under his jaw, pausing now and then to flick aside a bit of lather, the pressure consistent, practiced, his hand steady and sure. Artemis’ eyes always held a single-minded intensity, and it was fascinating to see on his own face. Jarlaxle suspected he would always be able to see _Artemis_ in that piercing stare whatever the face.

“Are you certain this would not be more comfortable if you were in my lap?” Jarlaxle’s jaw barely moved, but Artemis’ hands still paused long enough for Artemis to deliver a glare.

“Unless you should like me to slit your throat, I suggest not talking.”

Jarlaxle considered a quip asking if that would be by accident or on purpose, but he would rather not risk either.

A hand on Jarlaxle’s jaw manipulated the angle as Entreri’s knife moved up to his cheek. There was something erotic in this too, in the way the blade teased over his skin, in the way Artemis had him at his mercy, and Jarlaxle would act upon that if not for the way Artemis recoiled every time he tried.

And Jarlaxle noted that Entreri was shaving completely, not leaving any fluff around his chin or mouth like he was sometimes wont to do and which, he assumed, would be quicker and easier. Finally, Entreri tested the smoothness of Jarlaxle’s cheek, rubbing a finger along his tender, newly-shaved jawline, and nodded to himself.

As Artemis cleaned and gathered up his shaving supplies, Jarlaxle studied his face, and it was frustrating just how much Artemis could hide away in a face Jarlaxle should know better than he.

“Your father had a beard,” he said, just to shake something loose, regretting it the next moment when Artemis only screwed his face tighter.

Artemis handed him a towel, and Jarlaxle had given up on an answer and started to clean his face, when Artemis finally murmured without looking up from his shaving supplies, “My uncle.”

Jarlaxle paused, the air cold and mildly stinging as he rubbed a towel over his skin. Artemis had mentioned a “they” when Jarlaxle had coaxed him into giving some hints regarding his abuse as a child, and Jarlaxle knew about his father, but… “Uncle?” he prodded, gently.

Entreri’s kit clicked closed, his jaw clenched as tightly shut, and Jarlaxle understood that that was all he was going to hear.

“It was terribly itchy, anyway,” Jarlaxle said, standing and circling to approach Artemis from the side rather than behind. “With a jaw this fine, I might have trouble chasing away the ladies, however.”

Entreri turned to give him a flat look, but it didn’t hold, the barest amusement twitching at the corners of his lips as he shook his head. Encouraged, Jarlaxle slipped an arm around Artemis’ waist and kissed the skin behind his ear. Artemis didn’t recoil this time, but Jarlaxle didn’t press, not with Artemis’ ghosts still hovering in the air.

“Kimmuriel will contact Gromph,” Artemis said, relaxing in increments into Jarlaxle’s embrace. “Do you think it will help?”

Jarlaxle sighed. “One hopes, if the cost is dealing with Gromph.”

“I imagine Gromph is having similar thoughts about Jarlaxle.”

Jarlaxle laughed. “I suspect you are right. In the meantime, we shall have to figure out what to do with our other predicament, namely the price on the head I’m currently wearing?”

Artemis grunted in acknowledgement. “The sisters suggested that that might not be our greatest worry.”

“Ah. King Gareth still looking into his niece’s death?” Jarlaxle slipped away to peer out the window, one finger holding aside the curtain. The road barely earned the name, little more than a patch of wheel-troughed muck, but bathed in sunlight it almost looked charming. And there was novelty in that too, in feeling the sunlight on his face without its sting. “Or his underlings, anyway. From what I understand, Ellery was a distant niece, and he’d only met her once or twice. I suspect his concern is more performative than genuine.”

“Perhaps, but I doubt his suspicion is.” Entreri reached around him to pull the curtains closed again. “And it _is_ suspicious, both Ellery and Canthan killed by blades none of the constructs wielded, bodies found in an entirely different room than the others reported they fell. It would not take much digging for them to discover my previous occupation. Was the phylactery really worth it?”

“You think King Gareth’s ‘associates’ will mistake you for a member of the Citadel?” Jarlaxle asked, ignoring Entreri’s question. “Well, I suppose we should take a moment to appreciate the irony. Although… hmm…”

“What?”

“I have a thought,” Jarlaxle murmured, gaze unfocused as he tried fitting the pieces together. “Just one.”

“Well, you don’t want to strain yourself.”

“Certainly not, if I’m borrowing your brain as well as your body.”

Artemis opened and closed his mouth, visibly chagrined that he didn’t have a smart response to that.

“We have two potential enemies, currently,” Jarlaxle said, a slow smile spreading his lips. “Two _powerful_ potential enemies who are most famous for being enemies _of each other_.”

Artemis eyed him through the eyepatch, and Jarlaxle wondered if he did that on purpose, keeping his reaction hidden. “And you’re thinking to, what? Turn them on each other? That would start a war.”

“Or turn King Gareth on the assassins, anyway. And if they just so ‘happen’ to discover Ellery’s connection to the Citadel, well. What a fine coincidence!”

Entreri let out a cynical laugh. “He wouldn’t dare destroy the Citadel. He benefits from the guild more than anyone.”

Jarlaxle allowed himself a small smile. Bregan D’aerthe had served a similar role in Menzoberranzan, after all. “Of course he does. But he can’t admit that _publicly_. So he culls their number and allows a new head to take over.”

“And how do we plan to turn them on the Citadel?” Artemis asked, before his eyes widened in understanding. “You want to stage a coup.”

“One that can’t succeed, of course,” Jarlaxle replied, taking effort not to speak too quickly. “And one the king believes is from Knellict.”

“It can’t be traced back to us,” Artemis warned.

“Why would it be? It won’t _be_ us.” Jarlaxle’s grin grew broader still. “Or did you forget that we already know someone who tried to kill the king?”

Artemis breathed a helpless laugh, wiping a hand over his face. “Lorica.”

 

“You _are_ joking?”

Brien’s scowl was hardly intimidating, even if the candlelight cut deeper shadows across his face, and Jarlaxle was hardly surprised that Brien seemed more outraged than Lorica.

“I assure you, I am quite serious,” Jarlaxle replied.

“Weren’t you trying to _protect_ the king?” Brien spat.

“We were trying to get paid,” Entreri replied, arms folded and still exuding an aura of menace, purple hat and all. “It was his idea to invest in your wand-and-potion-making services instead.” He tipped his head at Jarlaxle without taking his stare off Brien. “I have yet to be convinced that this was a fair trade.”

“There is still a bounty on my head,” Lorica murmured. “What is the difference?”

“They’re using you,” Brien protested.

“To a mutually desired end,” Jarlaxle said. “We know Lorica has no great fondness for King Gareth.”

“That’s because Talos—!”

“It’s because Gareth is a hypocrite,” Lorica snapped, cutting off Brien’s protest. “A paladin king with enough wealth to end the poverty in his kingdom? Who turns a blind eye when slavers walk through his city? To the nine hells with Talos. Killing Gareth wasn’t his idea.”

Jarlaxle and Artemis exchanged furtive glances. “I take it you no longer believe in Talos,” Jarlaxle prompted.

“No, I still believe in him,” Lorica said with an acid-chewed laugh. “The problem is that he apparently doesn’t believe in me. And why would he? I’m just another lowly mortal.”

Jarlaxle was unusually pensive before he said, “I suspect you are better off without the attention of such a god. We ‘lowly mortals’ only attract their attention when they are looking for something to play with. And they have little regard for their toys.”

“Talos is not Lolth,” Lorica said with a sharp stare.

“He is not any better,” Entreri cut in. “You were a fool before, but at least I could excuse your foolishness from the effects of the idol.”

Lorica swung her glare his way. “Give me my mace back, and we will sort out who’s the fool.”

“I thought we already had,” Entreri said, glaring right back, “or did you forget the outcome the last time we fought?”

“Could we not do this? Again?” Brien requested.

Jarlaxle had a hand out, patting the air in front of Artemis in a request to calm down. “Let us maybe not anger the person whose aid we’re requesting?” He arched his eyebrows and gave Artemis a pointed look, which was met with a scowl.

“Aid?” Brien scoffed. “Sacrifice, more like.”

“Hardly,” Jarlaxle assured him. “She does not need to succeed in or complete the assassination, just make sure she’s seen.”

“The king will resume the chase and hunt her down!”

“Not if who he sees isn’t her.” Jarlaxle tossed Agatha’s Mask onto the table, a sly smile on his borrowed face.

Brien frowned down at the mask. For those unfamiliar with its magical properties, it was a simple thing, a scrap of wood with holes for the eyes and mouth. Lorica looked down at it, curiously.

“Then what does it matter who tries to kill Gareth?” Brien snapped. “Why don’t one of _you_ wear the mask?”

“Because we need to be seen to be completely uninvolved,” Jarlaxle answered. “And thus we need to be ourselves—for certain values of ‘ourselves’—in a completely different part of the city.”

“And who would I be, exactly?” Lorica asked carefully. The curiosity was a good sign, a hint of color returning to a gray expression, and again Jarlaxle was reminded of Artemis all those years ago. Brien may be content to live a quiet life, but Lorica needed excitement, needed purpose.

“Finding that out is our next step,” Jarlaxle informed her with a smile. “Someone from the Citadel, of course.”

Brien wiped a hand over his face, worry a tight look around his eyes. “I don’t understand,” he murmured. “He knighted you. Why do you need this ruse to get King Gareth to fight the Citadel? Can’t you just… ask?”

“Trust me,” Artemis drawled, “this is the least complicated solution.”

“I have no desire and no reason to trust you,” Brien shot back, chair scraping the floor as he stood. To Lorica, he said, “Do what you will. I’ll not stop you this time.”

A soft ache crossed Lorica’s face as she watched him storm off, and Jarlaxle waited for her to call out to him. She didn’t.

“Find me a face,” she said to them instead, “and I will consider it.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys find a 'face' for Lorica to borrow.

Jarlaxle was struck by his reflection, not because it was Artemis’ face staring back—he was almost used to that—but because it was Artemis’ face _smiling._ It was the kind of wide smile that lit his whole face, and Jarlaxle watched that smile shrink as he realized that he’d never seen that look on Artemis’ face before. It made something in him ache to think about it.

Jarlaxle’s smile was a shield. Disarming metaphorically was often less messy than the literal way, and as a drow on the surface, his smile and wit had saved his life—or, rather, the lives of those who would threaten him—on countless occasions. Smiling was a reflex, a way of seeming harmless, and it felt unnatural now to suppress that reflex.

Looking at himself in the mirror, at the Entreri scowl he was so familiar with, he understood that that scowl had served a similar purpose once. He pictured a young Artemis, alone, malnourished, needing to evoke fear rather than soothe it to survive.

“So you’re vain no matter what body you’re wearing,” Entreri said, barely sparing the floating mirror a glance. But Jarlaxle read discomfort in the moment their eyes met and flashed him that reflexive smile. Even if that was not why Jarlaxle was looking, Artemis still didn’t take well to physical admiration of his body.

“I am practicing my fearsome scowl,” Jarlaxle drawled.

Artemis’ hum said he was unimpressed. They had set up a temporary refuge in The Wash—short for _hogwash_ , he was told, but ironic considering how everything inside was in need of a wash—an inn in the slums of Heliogabalus, and Artemis was restless, waiting for the hammer to fall. The air smelled like snow, seeping into the room through the cracks of an ill-fitting window frame, and even with a ring that shielded him from the cold, the night had been a stiff and uncomfortable one.

Their fine clothing made them stand out in such a place, and Jarlaxle tutted and reached over to adjust the way the purple hat sat on Artemis’ head. He set it at an angle and smoothed the feather over his shoulder, ignoring Artemis’ long-suffering sigh.

“Are you quite finished grooming me?”

“For now.” Jarlaxle tweaked one pointed ear before leaving him alone, enjoying Artemis’ harsh intake of breath and the warning growl that followed. “You have a persona to keep up, remember? And that persona cares about his appearance.”

“‘That persona’ prances about like a peacock.”

“A beautiful bird, or so I am told.”

“A vain one.”

“ _Smile_.”

Entreri scowled all the more

“Embrace your inner peacock,” Jarlaxle teased.

“I’d much rather punch another peacock,” Entreri grumbled, nudging Jarlaxle towards the stairs, pulling the shove just enough to not push him down them.

“I’m wearing your face!” Jarlaxle reminded him with a smile that did not match it.

“You won’t be wearing _any_ face if you keep this up.”

Jarlaxle cackled, before remembering his own persona and wrestling his expression into something vaguely threatening.

Jarlaxle’s wardrobe was the only source of color in the grimy tavern below, bright enough to be its own light source. But the point _was_ to stand out, to draw attention… to paint a target on their foreheads.

They bravely ordered breakfast and took a seat in the middle of the room.

“You truly think that’s wise?” Entreri asked as though continuing a conversation they had already started. “Returning home? We still don’t know the state of things, and—”

“I will not be long,” Jarlaxle interrupted, keeping his tone brusque. “There is much we left behind in our apartment, and I doubt they would be foolish enough to strike the same place twice.”

“You make too many assumptions, _abbil_ ,” Artemis said, and Jarlaxle fought down the smile that wanted to follow that.

“I can _assume_ that none of them want to die.”

Artemis smiled then, a small, private thing that said it wasn’t part of the act. That was exactly the sort of thing he would have said, and Jarlaxle knew it.

“Very well, if you insist,” Artemis said with exactly the right amount of theatrics. “I will pay the Lady Ilnezhara a visit then, while you get what you need.”

Through the eyepatch, Entreri watched the half-elf in the corner scurry out of the tavern. He gave Jarlaxle a barely perceptible nod. The trap was set.

They didn’t wait for their breakfast.

 

Entreri perched like a gargoyle on the rooftop across from their apartment, and, thanks to Agatha’s Mask, a gargoyle was exactly what he looked like to any down below. He studied the busy street with an almost meditative stillness, already familiar with the pattern of traffic, barely pausing on the thickly iced patches of road that spilled out of a familiar alley. The ground and walls still hadn’t thawed entirely, though the bodies had at least been chiseled free, and most gave the area in front of their apartment a wide berth.

Which made the interest of his would-be assassins glaringly obvious as they milled about. They were an insult to his former profession.

“Three,” Entreri told his companion, his mouth barely moving.

“They never think to look up, do they?” Jarlaxle asked from the nearby shadows. He did not have as good a sight line to the street below, but he was as well—if not better—hidden than Artemis. “Is that a surface thing?”

“We don’t generally factor levitating drow into our preparations.”

“Surely there are other dangers that come from above?” Jarlaxle replied.

“Such as dragons?” Artemis drawled.

“Well, yes, but those are rather hard to miss.”

“Our cities are built differently,” Artemis pointed out. “Except for rooftops and balconies, our upper levels are indoors, and there is a limit to how tall our buildings can be.”

“Whereas carving a city out of a cave gives its layout another dimension. Yes, I had noticed. Fascinating how that changes one’s behavior and expectations, however.”

“Still doesn’t account for your behavior.”

Jarlaxle laughed. “Three, you say?”

“Unless being drow somehow hinders my counting ability.”

Jarlaxle let out a considering sort of hum. “We only need one, and if we wait, likely more of their lackeys will come along. Superior numbers can balance stupidity.”

“A cogent description for civilization in general.”

“You’re awfully mouthy for a gargoyle,” Jarlaxle said with a smirk.

“And you’re awfully chatty for an Entreri,” was the wry response. Entreri barely moved a muscle. “The half-elf we first saw is the most obvious.”

“The one ‘shopping’ at the fruit vendor?”

Entreri hummed an affirmative.

“We can lure her into the nearby alley,” Jarlaxle suggested. “Drow poison will do the rest.”

“Her companions will notice and follow, if they are not completely incompetent.”

Jarlaxle inched closer to peer over the roof’s edge, spotting the two pretending to be a couple.

“Which is why you will distract them, of course,” Jarlaxle said with a slow-curling smile.

The gargoyle barely tilted his head, but Jarlaxle read the curiosity in the gesture.

“I suggest you keep the mask on,” Jarlaxle said as he slipped back into the shadows.

 

Jarlaxle lurked in the alley just outside their building, marveling at the way the shadows seemed to cling to him. He looked down at his hand and found he could barely see it, even with his dark vision. As a drow, Jarlaxle was used to blending into the dark, even with his colorful attire, but rarely had it ever been this easy.

Artemis truly was part Shade now, it seemed, which begged the question: what else was he absorbing—could absorb—with that terrible dagger of his? There was an idea forming there, a thin hope that maybe, _maybe_ , Artemis’ mortality was not a foregone conclusion, but Jarlaxle tucked that observation aside for later.

This was not the time to think of it. And it was certainly not the time to be thinking of the last time he’d been in this alley, pinned to the wall with his legs wrapped around Artemis, Artemis’ teeth on his ear, his neck, Artemis’ hand on his—

“Sex camel,” he muttered, also trying not to think about just how long it had been and how badly he missed the heat of a hard body against his. His thumb toyed with the red-gemmed ring that matched Artemis’. He wished pettily that Artemis were still wearing his, if only so some of his frustration would carry over.

The half-elf passed his way, and while her back was turned to the street, another dark shape slipped out of an alley across the way, drawing the attention of the other two would-be assassins.

That was his cue. Jarlaxle glided out of the alley, the shadows slipping away in time for his target to spot him, stutter-stopping mid-stride just before Jarlaxle tugged her into the alley, back into the shadows. A hand over her mouth silenced her screams, and a poisoned dart in her neck stilled her body.

“Simple enough,” he said, binding her hands and gagging her mouth with a bit of rope from his bag of holding. Slinging her over his shoulder, he took a moment to appreciate the strength in his borrowed body, something he wished he could try out in a more horizontal arena.

But this still wasn’t the time for that.

He tossed his portable hole to the ground, tossed her inside, and then gathered it back up again as though it had never better there. A pair of figures raised a shout at the end of the alley, cutting off his escape. Jarlaxle cursed, lamenting the loss of his levitation as he pulled a dagger into his hand, throwing one, two, three, four times, burying one in one man’s throat and the other three in the second man’s chest.

But the shout would have drawn attention. Jarlaxle stuffed the hole into a pocket and hoisted himself up along the drainpipe the way he’d seen Artemis do in the past, grunting with the effort, relieved to be in a body built and trained for this sort of thing. Below him were more shouts and the sound of thudding footsteps, but the guards didn’t look up—they never looked up—and he pulled himself up over the ledge in an ungraceful tumble.

A pair of boots stepped into his line of sight as Jarlaxle disentangled himself, and he followed them up to see Artemis. There was amusement in his face—Artemis’ _true_ face—as he reached up to peel off the mask.

“What took you so long?” Jarlaxle’s face asked Jarlaxle innocently.

“Ha, ha,” Jarlaxle drawled, snatching the mask back and slipping it on. He could have been anyone, anyone at all, so he settled for a face he knew would make Artemis scowl.

“ _Bwahaha_!”

“Oh, for the love of…” Artemis groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose and turning away from “Athrogate” and his shit-eating grin.

“What?” Jarlaxle asked innocently as he set off to follow. “Durned assassins know not to mess with one o’ their own.”

“Please stop talking. Immediately.”

“You don’t want to talk how I’m passin’ as a great dwarf assassin?”

“I will punt you off this roof.”

“Punt me? Boo. Why not run me through?” On his own face, Jarlaxle’s wink would have been mischievous and charming. On Athrogate’s, it was creepy, and the way Artemis’ face twisted said as much.

Jarlaxle nearly tripped over his own feet when Artemis responded in meter.

“While looking like him? Let’s take stock. If you want a stabbing, you’re in for a shock. It’s a stabbing you’ll get, one you’ll not soon forget, but with my dagger and not with my…” Entreri’s lips curled wickedly. “… _sword_.”

Jarlaxle let out a sputtering laugh as they vaulted to the next rooftop. “You know, that’s not bad!”

“I could have taken the easier road and rhymed with ‘Athrogate’ to the same effect, but that seemed uncouth,” Artemis replied almost primly, and Jarlaxle found himself staring at him in delighted amazement.

“I rather like this side of you, Artemis,” Jarlaxle purred.

“A shame, as I dislike this side of you. In fact, I dislike all your sides so long as you’re borrowing that face.”

“Then let us get back to the others that I might stop wearing this face. In fact, if you like, I can go the extra distance and stop wearing anything at all.”

Artemis sighed before hopping to the next roof, balancing himself on the slanted tiles. He looked back to make sure Jarlaxle could manage with his unfamiliar shape. “Please keep my pants on,” he said, steadying Jarlaxle with a hand on his elbow.

Jarlaxle’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Sex camel,” he muttered again.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the late update. Haven't been well, and life's being a pain in the ass.

Lorica peered over the edge of the hole and considered the bound and gagged half-elf in front of her, studying her like a bug in a glass and dispassionately meeting her wild-eyed stare. “I imagine she will do,” Lorica said, shrugging one shoulder as though she hardly cared. She had joined them at the The Wash, smuggled into the city through a wagon supplying goods to Piter’s bakery, and she still had the distant, faded look of an eternal spectator.

“I take it Brien did not accompany you?” Jarlaxle asked, though it wasn’t really a question.

Lorica’s vacant shrug wasn’t really an answer either, but Jarlaxle understood it well enough.

“I see.” His tone was pleasant, upbeat, but Entreri read uncertainty in the look Jarlaxle shot him.

_You don’t trust her?_ Entreri signed to him behind her back, chagrined by how much easier it was for his thinner, more delicate drow fingers to sketch the shapes.

_I wouldn’t say “distrust”…_ Jarlaxle signed slowly, the frown creasing his brow saying he was having the reverse revelation. _I am not certain she is in the right state to follow this through._

Entreri considered her profile, the vacant look in her eyes that felt unsettlingly familiar. _For once, I agree with you._

_For once, you see reason, you mean._

_I know I am wearing your face, but you are not, in fact, talking to yourself._

A smile twitched at Jarlaxle’s lips, but his focus was on Lorica.

“You should kill her,” Lorica said.

A strangled shriek said their captive thought otherwise.

“I could,” Jarlaxle agreed. He didn’t and instead crouched to grip the edge of the hole, lifting it off the floor and folding it into his pocket as it shrank. “Eventually. Or I could save that for after the attack, when there’s a bounty on her body. Besides, I would rather not have a dead body stinking up my things, and they can be such a bother to dispose of.”

Lorica’s huff said she hardly cared.

“Dinner?” Jarlaxle suggested cheerfully. “I promise the stew here is delicious, despite appearances.”

Entreri scoffed. “You trust them not to poison us?”

“Oh, I trust no one not to poison us, _mal’ai_. But it would be terribly bad for business if they did so.”

Entreri raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Oh, did I not tell you? I bought the place.”

Entreri favored Jarlaxle with a long, slow blink. “You… bought it. Why?”

Jarlaxle’s lips curled in that crooked, impish smile that did not belong on his face. “Taverns are a font of information, _mal’ai_.”

Entreri wiped a hand over his face. “Of course they are.”

“Dinner?” Jarlaxle suggested again.

Entreri was about to tell him that he would let Jarlaxle taste the food first, only to remember that it would be his body suffering the consequences. Jarlaxle’s look said he knew what Entreri was thinking. He led Entreri’s gaze to Lorica and offered a barely-there shrug.

 

Their surprise came before the food. They tramped down the stairs into the buzz of a tavern at its busiest—and loudest and smelliest, to Entreri’s regrettably-enhanced senses—only for a familiar voice to carry over the other sounds, if not over the other patrons’ heads.

“Oy! You two! I’ve a bone ter pick with you!”

“No,” Entreri said matter-of-factly as he turned to walk back up the stairs. Jarlaxle grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him back again, guiding him down the rest of the way. Entreri growled but allowed himself to be moved.

They saw the bodies move, shoved to either side, before they spotted Athrogate lumbering towards him, a hand adjusting his belt. His lips were pressed so thin that they disappeared under his mustache, but Jarlaxle took comfort that it was a finger the dwarf pointed his and Entreri’s way and not a mace.

“Ye want ter explain why they saw ye runnin’ about with someone who looked like me?”

Jarlaxle exchanged a look with Artemis, careful to keep his expression distantly puzzled. Behind them, Lorica looked on with some amusement.

“‘They’?” Artemis prompted, slipping back into his role even as he internally bristled at having that finger in his face.

Athrogate flapped his hand in irritation. “They! Yer neighbors, and the new blood too stupid to know not to chase ye until the price is higher. I know ye got magic up the arse! So what was it? And what’re ye tryin’ to do?”

A glance around said that they’d drawn the attention of the room.

“I think we can talk this out without making a scene, don’t you?” Entreri said, though the tightness in his jaw said that “talking” was the last thing he wanted to do with the dwarf.

“You get a table,” Jarlaxle suggested. “I’ll get a round of drinks.” _Don’t antagonize him,_ he signed. He offered Lorica a wink on the way by, but she just raised an eyebrow.

Athrogate seemed about to argue, until the mention of drinks. He struggled internally for a moment before relaxing. “Bah! It’d better be a strong drink!”

Even with Jarlaxle’s face and ridiculous concept of fashion, a glare from Entreri was enough to send the occupants of one table scattering, leaving it empty for them.

“So what is it?” Athrogate asked before he’d even plopped into a seat. His stare bore into Artemis, who decided sitting across from him was less dangerous than sitting next to him.

“So the price on Entreri’s head still isn’t high enough to tempt you?” Entreri asked, using all of his considerable acting skills to keep his demeanor relaxed and friendly.

Athrogate scoffed. “I know a stallin’ tactic when I see one, elf.”

“So do I,” Entreri replied without blinking.

“Already told ye.” Athrogate shrugged.

“Are your friends sure they saw _you_?” Entreri asked. “There are many who say that all dwarves look the same—”

“Stop dancin’, elf,” Athrogate growled.

Entreri’s eyes flashed, warning him not to interrupt him again. But then he hesitated, deciding that a kernel of truth might earn him some good will. “A minor illusion,” he confessed. “My companion needed to get something from the apartment, and we ran into some trouble with your compatriots. They may have been foolish enough to chase Entreri, but they weren’t foolish enough to compete with Athrogate for the privilege.”

Athrogate harrumphed but looked somewhat mollified. Jarlaxle slid the dwarf’s drink in front of him just as Athrogate was about to say something else, and he passed out the rest of the drinks before slipping into his seat.

Athrogate downed his drink in one quaff, foam spilling over his beard. Entreri struggled to keep his distaste off his face and almost succeeded until Athrogate finished with a loud and fetid belch. Entreri regretted choosing the seat across from him.

“Ehh, not Gutbuster—that’s true—but for human swill? It’ll do.”

Entreri’s jaw creaked with the effort not to groan. Under the table, Jarlaxle patted his knee in support.

“So how’d ye like wearin’ my face?” Athrogate asked, turning a wide grin on Jarlaxle. “Have more luck w’ the ladies?”

“He certainly had less luck with me,” Entreri drawled. Athrogate’s guffaw was equal parts reassuring and grating.

“Better’n me hearin’ that I plowed that stick of a drow.”

Lorica snickered, and Entreri tossed her a glare, trying not to picture what she clearly was.

_Don’t kill him_ , Jarlaxle signed to him under the table.

“Oy, since when d’ye drink that grape piss?” Athrogate asked, and Jarlaxle paused, wine glass hovering in front of his chin. Athrogate turned another curious glance on the ale in front of what he thought was Jarlaxle. “D’ye mix up yer drinks?”

Entreri signed back to Jarlaxle, _He’s suspicious. Now can I kill him?_

“We’re trying something new,” Jarlaxle said while Lorica smirked into her own drink.

_Killing him would be something new…_

Jarlaxle swatted Artemis’ hand, his focus still on Athrogate.

“Yeah, ye’ve been tryin’ a few new things, aye?” Athrogate huffed, and suddenly all humor drained from his face as he leaned into Jarlaxle’s space. A moment later, the hand that had swatted Artemis’ had a dagger tucked into its palm. “Ye had yer fun, and ye got what ye wanted. But wear my face again, and I’ll tear it off.”

“And if _you_ threaten _him_ again, I’ll tear something _else_ off,” Entreri growled, hand curled around the hilt of Charon’s Claw.

“Ar— _Jarlaxle_ ,” Jarlaxle hissed, shooting him a warning look. “That won’t be necessary.”

“It’s not like you to let a threat like that slide, _Artemis_.” Entreri met his glare.

Athrogate looked back and forth between them, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’s goin’ on h—?”

Lorica interrupted them all with a loud belch, louder than Athrogate’s, as she slammed her tankard down next to the dwarf’s. “They call this a drink? I barely wet my tongue.” Once she saw she had their attention, Lorica looked at Athrogate, sizing him up. “Care for another round?”

They held their breath as Athrogate just stared at her a moment. Then he threw his head back in another guffaw. “I hope yer pockets are deep if yer thinkin’ to be distractin’ me with drinkin’.” Still, he held up his empty tankard alongside Lorica until the barmaid saw them and nodded. “Ye ordered food too, aye?”

“Considering the offense you took at being seen with us,” Entreri said, “you are in no hurry to leave our company.”

A look from Jarlaxle bade him to be careful with that line of questioning.

“Bah! I don’ mind being seen with ye. I mind someone else takin’ my _face_. I’m sure ye wouldn’t like it, neither.”

Artemis and Jarlaxle exchanged wry glances.

“You are not worried that your master will disapprove of the company?” Jarlaxle prompted. “And yes, food is already on the way.”

Athrogate shot him a sharp look at the word “master”. “My only master is whate’er pays for the drinks. I like ye well enough, but.” He shrugged, but Jarlaxle read what he wasn’t saying.

“But if you found someone who paid more, you would be drinking with them,” Artemis said, and Jarlaxle would have to tell him to tone down that stare. It sent shivers down his spine but was exactly the sort of threateningly intense “Jarlaxle” generally wasn’t.

Athrogate shrugged again. “Yer no different. Don’ pretend ye wouldn’t turn on him too if the price was high enough.”

“I wouldn’t,” Entreri said with such certainty and offense that Jarlaxle suspected he hadn’t thought it through. He caught the startled look that crossed Entreri’s borrowed features, there and gone in a flash, and wished he could see through the layers of that statement. Was it simply reflexive? Was Entreri literally putting words into Jarlaxle’s mouth to present a certain image or to warn? Or was that reaction more visceral, his statement referring to the people behind their current faces?

Was that Entreri professing a foolish level of loyalty? Or was Jarlaxle the one being foolish, hoping for exactly that?

Entreri staunchly pretended not to notice Jarlaxle’s curious look, and then the barmaid’s arm and décolletage blocked his view and drew it away. He thanked her as she slid a bowl of stew and another glass of wine in front of him, his charming smile curling higher to one side at the pretty flush that crossed her cheeks. He waited for Artemis’ sigh and dramatic eye roll, but instead his face grew tight, his uncovered eye turning inward. Jarlaxle tucked away that mental image to scrutinize later, but for now his focus needed to be on Athrogate.

“Lie to yerself all ye want,” the dwarf was saying, fresh ale already dripping down his beard. “But everyone has a price.” He rubbed his fingers together as though invoking the clinking of coins.

“So this is what it’s like to eat at a table full of mercenaries,” Lorica drawled. “You are a charming lot.”

Athrogate belched in her direction, but she hardly blinked.

“I don’t think you came here just to scold us,” Jarlaxle said, “or just to eat the food.”

“Of course not,” Athrogate scoffed. “I’m here for the drinks!”

“Everyone has a price,” Jarlaxle repeated. “And I’ll remind you that, right now, we’re the ones buying the drinks.”

Athrogate gave him a shrewd look over his stew, beard bristling as he chewed. “What’re ye thinkin’ o’ buyin’?” After a pause, he eyed Jarlaxle up and down as he added, “And my ‘sausage’ ain’t for sale, just to put that on the table.”

Entreri choked on his ale.

“Please don’t put that on the table,” Jarlaxle said, cringing.

_What are you on about_? Artemis signed to Jarlaxle under the table.

Artemis watched his cheek muscles move as he suppressed the urge to smile. _Credibility, abbil._

“And I assure you that if your sausage were to get involved,” Jarlaxle said, “you would be the one paying _us_.”

… _credibility_? Entreri signed, to which Jarlaxle swatted his hand again.

Athrogate barked a laugh. “Keep dreamin’, boy. Now who d’ye want me to kill?”

Entreri’s lips thinned at being called “boy”. At his body being called “boy”, in any case.

“We are perfectly capable of doing our own killing,” Jarlaxle said with almost the right amount of menace. “We just want you to talk.”

Athrogate tore off a piece of meat with his teeth, eyes trained on Jarlaxle. “We’re talkin’ now.”

“Not to us,” Entreri cut in, catching on, aware that he was supposed to be wearing the role of schemer. “And not about us.”

“Then what about and to who?” Athrogate asked, tone prickly with impatience.

“About a few late mutual acquaintances.”

Athrogate raised an eyebrow, waiting for the rest of that answer.

“Any more talk of this should be in private,” Entreri said evenly.

Athrogate eyed him over a sip of his drink. “I’m chargin’ ye by the minute, y’know.”

“And we’re paying for it in drinks,” Entreri shot back, remembering to smile at the last moment.

“Not enough,” Athrogate protested, pushing aside another empty tankard. “If yer askin’ what I think yer askin’, not nearly enough.”

“Afraid?” Lorica needled.

“Cautious,” Athrogate corrected. “And what’s yer lot in this?”

“The same as you,” Lorica replied. “Free drinks, a relief from boredom.”

“Ye think I’m bored?”

“I think you must be if drinking is the only thing you look forward to.”

Athrogate’s chair creaked as he rocked back. “Ye don’t know me, girl.”

“Is there more to know?” She held his stare as his expression darkened. She motioned for another round of drinks. “A challenge, then, since you love drink above all. If I can keep pace with you, you will listen to the rest of our proposition. If not, you simply walk away.”

“Hold on,” Jarlaxle cut in, and Entreri couldn’t help but find amusement in how quickly this was spiraling out of Jarlaxle’s control.

“No, no, I think I need to see this,” Entreri interrupted him in kind. Jarlaxle’s glare was perfectly honest and perfectly in character.

“‘See’? Oh no, you’ll be drinking too,” Lorica replied. “Both of you.”

Athrogate guffawed. “Well, well. This could be fun. What kinda drunk d’ye reckon Entreri will be?”

“An angry one,” Entreri drawled.

Athrogate flapped his hand in the air. “He’s already angry _sober_. Alright. But we’re drinkin’ Gutbuster.”

“And only one of us has to keep pace,” Lorica added.

There was another harsh laugh from Athrogate. “Little good it’ll do ye. Better eat up, boys.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gutbuster is really not for human or drow consumption...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the patience, guys. Apologies for any dip in writing quality, as treatment is Slow (but seems to be working)! I might have to stick to an every other week update schedule for a couple more updates, but I have no intention of slowing any more than that. :D
> 
> ~~ngl, I've been a little nervous about posting this one...~~

Lorica and Athrogate were still drinking by the time they gave up, which was around the time Artemis found Jarlaxle talking to a mirror and calling it “Artemis”. Entreri spat the last of the vomit from his mouth and slipped an arm around Jarlaxle’s waist, as much to steady himself as his companion.

“Jarlaxle.”

“Mmn?”

“Please stop trying to hump the mirror. That’s your reflection.” Entreri paid careful attention to his pronunciation, overenunciating to hide the drunken slur. He licked his numb lips. He’d had no intention of letting the drinking get this far, but the Gutbuster had hit him hard and all at once.

“No, s’not,” Jarlaxle insisted, swiveling his head around to address Artemis with gratingly slow, simplified words as though explaining to a child. “I am _drow_.” He squinted at Artemis then, at his hat and pointed ears, close enough for Artemis to smell the Gutbuster’s sourness on his breath. “Wait…”

Jarlaxle turned back to the mirror and squinted at their reflections but allowed himself to be pulled away to the stairs. Entreri stumbled on the first step, growling in frustration. The room swam, and instead of relaxed, that amount of drink had him on edge, like there was a threat lurking somewhere that moved too quickly for him to find.

“I thought you had an… an item to help with the… sobri… sob… soberness.”

“S’not a word,” Jarlaxle grumbled, brows furrowing in profound concentration even as he swayed into Artemis, who in turn swayed into a wall. And growled at it. “And I do. You do. My body… do. It’s that ring on your…” He gestured loosely, flopping his hand at Artemis’ hand. “The yellow one.”

Entreri frowned down at the ring on his middle finger, which was glowing a brighter yellow than he remembered. He paused in his steps, nearly sending Jarlaxle overbalancing back into him and down the stairs. “ _Really?_ ”

“Really.”

“You’re a lightweight!”

“So’re you!” Jarlaxle groaned. “I thought humans were s’posed to hold their liquor better!”

“I never drink!” Entreri protested.

“And look where it’s gotten us!” Jarlaxle huffed. He was making no effort to counteract the slurring in his words, and there was that hint of a drow accent again, all the more startling for being in the wrong voice. He blinked at the door Artemis had brought them to. “…where has it gotten us?”

“To our room, _mal’ai_.”

There was an impatience to Entreri’s teasing, the stew a leaden weight in his stomach, and he only just remembered the color of the dragon—“black”—before he half-dragged, half-shoved Jarlaxle into the room.

“You’re drunk,” Jarlaxle pointed out, infuriatingly sensible for once as Entreri went about setting the locks and traps in place. Lorica could find her own lodging, after getting them into that.

“My hands still work,” Entreri grumbled, even as the first lock argued with him. He had the presence of mind not to set any poison into their traps tonight.

“So do mine,” Jarlaxle purred. The presence of his body became a pressure, sword-callused hands slipping under Artemis’ shirt as he kissed the pulse-point at Artemis’ throat.

Entreri flubbed the next trap. His pulse kicked up under Jarlaxle’s lips, and he gave up on the rest of the traps as those hands traced the muscles of his chest and stomach. “Jarlaxle…”

But Jarlaxle’s hands paused when they found another hidden pocket on the inside of his shirt. He nibbled the point of one ear just to feel Artemis shiver and watch that ear twitch before pulling one arm free, a small vial dangling at the end of his fingers. Entreri’s eyes crossed as he tried to watch it, the eyepatch making everything warp and change color, and then Entreri was only barely swallowing back the rest of his stew, shoving the eyepatch up off of his eye.

Jarlaxle just shoved the vial his way. “For ‘soberness’. Sort of. A bit. To make the Buttguster— Gut. Gutbuster—stop… gusting… busting your… whatever. Drink some.”

Entreri’s stomach flopped too much for him to argue, clammy sweat making his shirt cling to his back, and he took the vial and sipped. It hit like a slap of cold, the room solidifying into the proper shapes and colors but still rocking and twisting more than he was used to.

“Dwarves,” Entreri groaned as though the word were a curse.

“Dwarves,” Jarlaxle agreed, toasting Artemis before knocking back the rest of the vial. He reached back under Artemis’ shirt to tuck away the empty vial.

“I’m fairly certain you have other hidden pockets in this outfit that are easier to reach,” Entreri drawled.

“Yes, but that would mess up my system.” Jarlaxle stayed pressed to his side, the arm wrapped around his waist still tucked under his shirt.

Artemis gave him a skeptical look. “You don’t have a system.”

“I do!” Jarlaxle protested. “How do you think I know where all my magical items are?”

“You don’t have any magic items _there_ ,” Artemis said, shooting an accusing look at the hand now trying to sneak under the waistband of his pants.

“You don’t know my system,” Jarlaxle said with a coy smirk that didn’t belong on his face.

Artemis blinked, expecting that to be enough to banish the strange image, but he couldn’t blame that on the drink.

Jarlaxle tilted his head, eyeing him intently. “You’re making that face again,” he added in a murmur.

“Face?” Artemis’ facial muscles pulled his expression into its usual scowl before he could even catalog what face he _was_ making.

Jarlaxle sighed, a look of regret crossing his face before melting into a smile. He reached up to Artemis’ cheeks, digging his thumbs into the corners of his mouth and pulling them up. Artemis didn’t tense anymore when Jarlaxle reached for him, no matter what body he was in, and that was dangerous, a part of him acknowledged. Jarlaxle could kill him, and easily.

And if he tried, Artemis suspected he’d let him.

“Why didn’t you pull that potion out sooner?” Artemis asked, voice distorted by the manipulation of Jarlaxle’s hands. “We might have had a chance against Athrogate.”

“Well, I _tried_ , but you kept swatting my hand away!”

Artemis huffed. “So the next time you’re fondling me in public, I should just let you?”

“For our safety, yes,” Jarlaxle said with mock solemnity. He pulled his thumbs free, satisfied when the barest smile remained on Artemis’ lips, even if it quickly faded. “Bed,” he said decisively, nudging Artemis ahead of him. They only stumbled a little this time, using gravity to bear them to the mattress in a tangle of limbs.

A giggle bubbled its way up his chest as Jarlaxle rolled half on top of Artemis, grinning down into a face like a mirror. “If anyone’s going to be borrowing my body, I’m glad it’s you, _ssin’urn_.” His fingers played with the buttons on Artemis’ vest—well, it was _his_ vest, but Artemis was wearing it and his body—and teased it and the shirt beneath it open, revealing more ink-dark skin.

“‘ _Ssin’urn_ ’,” Artemis repeated, watching Jarlaxle with an inscrutable look.

“‘Beautiful’,” Jarlaxle translated, though he knew Artemis understood what it meant.

Artemis snorted. “Because I’m in your body,” he drawled, all too aware of the heat of another body pressed against his.

Jarlaxle propped himself up on his elbows. “I called _you_ _ssin’urn_ , not my body, or do you still not know how irresistible you are?” His eyes were dark, locked on Artemis’ as he bent to mouth at the line of his jaw, to press teeth into his throat. He felt and heard Artemis’ breath hitch. “Your striking eyes and clever hands…” Those hands pushed Artemis’ vest and shirt open and slid over bare skin, feeling each shiver of breath, the uptick in his pulse. “Your rumbling voice I can feel in my chest…” His tongue toyed with Artemis’ earrings, and his teeth worked their way up his ear. Artemis clutched at his shirt as his body arched, a moan trembling from his lips. “Your lean, gorgeous body…” He rolled his hips into Artemis’, teeth pinching the tip of his ear. He purred when Artemis shakily lifted a leg to hook over his hip. “And this…” Jarlaxle took one of the hands clenched in his shirt and guided it down to his crotch. “Oh _this…_ ” His words trailed off in a thick moan as Artemis rolled his palm. “Every part of you is _ssin’urn, ussta mal’ai,_ ” he breathed, rocking his hips with intent, into those clever fingers and against the warm body beneath him.

Little choked-off moans met his ear as Jarlaxle started on his own clothing, levering himself up enough to shrug off his shirt and toss it into the dark. He looked down to see Artemis’ eyes closed, to feel Artemis’ leg tightening around him, Artemis’ hardness a hot weight against his thigh. Jarlaxle cupped Artemis’ borrowed face between his hands, brushed his thumbs and fingers up to caress his ears.

“Open your eyes,” Jarlaxle coaxed. “See how beautiful you are.”

Artemis let out a shuddering breath. “You are perverse,” he said even as he opened his eyes.

Jarlaxle’s smile was soft, eyes radiant, and Artemis found himself staring, trying to make sense of the image above him, that that was _his_ face shining with such open affection, that someone, anyone, was looking at _him_ that way.

It wasn’t until he saw that smile melt into concern that Artemis realized he was trembling.

“Artemis?”

“Idiot drow,” Artemis hissed without heat. Whatever this feeling was, he was drowning in it, his lungs thick and cloying.

“ _Abbil_ …” Jarlaxle’s thumbs stroked his cheeks, then Jarlaxle’s body curled over and around him, blanketing him. Artemis clutched at his back, pressed his face into Jarlaxle’s shoulder and shivered.

“How is it so easy for you?”

“How is what so easy?”

Artemis just gestured helplessly, frustratedly, unsure how to explain. The smiles, the affection, the expressiveness and openness, the way he interacted with people as though there were no invisible wall between him and them.

“ _This_ ,” was all he could hiss out through his teeth, face still pressed to Jarlaxle’s shoulder. His knuckles were white where they fisted in Jarlaxle’s shirt, and his entire body was strung tight.

Jarlaxle was silent for a long moment, waiting for the ragged edges of Artemis’ breathing to smooth out. “We are the products of our environments, _abbil_ ,” he murmured. He wondered how long this particular ache had been festering and realized that Artemis’ self-loathing still ran deep. At least this had to be a healthier way of coping than his obsession with Drizzt.

“Put on the mask,” Artemis forced out.

“Artemis—”

“The _mask_!” he snapped when Jarlaxle didn’t immediately move.

“All right,” Jarlaxle soothed. He was halfway to climbing out of the bed before remembering he was still wearing his belt and thus his Bag of Holding. It took some fumbling, but then he found it, slipping it onto his face and willing his own shape forward.

Artemis sat up, and Jarlaxle wondered if he even noticed just how tightly clenched his muscles were. Jarlaxle reached past him for the hat that had fallen to the pillow, setting it with a flourish atop his head, and that gesture at least earned him an amused huff of breath. It felt odd, the hat catching on hair he still wasn’t used to having and which he knew Artemis couldn’t see.

“Better?” Jarlaxle asked with his most beaming smile, the mask’s wood catching on his cheeks.

“More… normal,” Artemis admitted. “Which I suppose says plenty about the kind of life I lead.”

Artemis was back to insulting him. A good sign.

“That you have come to take such spectacular sights for granted?” Jarlaxle teased in kind, gesturing down at his bare torso.

“‘Spectacular’?” Artemis drawled.

“I should know. That’s been my view all week!” Jarlaxle crawled around to sit next to Artemis, their thighs and shoulders touching. He studied Artemis’ profile— _his_ profile—and watched even that barest touch of humor drain from his face. “Discussion or distraction?”

Artemis’ brows knit. “What?”

“Discussion or distraction. Do you want to talk about it or—?”

“I want you to leave it alone.”

“So distraction then. Want to try kissing me with the mask on? I’m curious to see how that works.”

Artemis gave him an incredulous look. Jarlaxle just climbed into his lap, swinging his leg around to straddle him. Artemis’ hands drifted to Jarlaxle’s hips automatically, but Jarlaxle didn’t lean down for a kiss, his arms wrapped around Artemis’ neck, and instead studied his face. To Artemis, it looked right but felt off, his weight heavier, his body more solid and skin coarser under his hands.

Looking down into his own face, at the harder edges in his expression, Jarlaxle understood. “You see what could have been, don’t you?” he murmured, thinking back to those parchment-yellow memories of his youth, to seeing that same hardened look on the people he grew up with. The life that would have been his if he hadn’t been Yvonnel’s son and “favored of Lolth”. The life that had almost been his anyway.

The way Artemis tightened his face, looking past him, said he’d hit the mark.

“All this time, and you still have no sense of your own value, do you?”

Artemis wondered how Jarlaxle could keep doing that, putting words that itched under his skin. “I thought we’d decided on ‘distraction’?” Artemis side-stepped before pulling him down into a kiss. He braced for the scrape of wood, only to feel lips instead, and he reached up, testing the softness of Jarlaxle’s cheek and finding that it felt like skin.

“Oh, that is strange,” Jarlaxle murmured as Artemis’ hands explored his face. “I can feel—and taste—both the mask and you.”

Artemis could feel a seam at the edge of Jarlaxle’s jaw, just enough for him to be able to hook his thumb under if he needed to. For now, he needed not to. He kissed Jarlaxle again, felt the body against him all but melt into his, a sort of relief in the willing sag of his shoulders. He breathed in Jarlaxle’s groan, shivered at the pull of Jarlaxle’s teeth on his lip.

“Artemis, please,” Jarlaxle breathed against his lips, pressing his hips into Artemis’ even as his spine arched into the drag of Artemis’ fingers. “I am but a weak drow…”

“Right now, you’re a _human_ , wearing a mask.”

“Right now, I’m a camel who’s wandered too long in the desert!”

A soft laugh bubbled up Artemis’ chest at the profound frustration in Jarlaxle’s voice. And he was grateful— _beyond_ grateful—that the mask extended to voices too.

“A terribly vain camel,” Artemis teased, hands caressing Jarlaxle’s back but hesitating at the waistband of his pants. All his life, he had trained to notice the details, to notice when something wasn’t quite right, and that sharp focus had saved his life on countless occasions. Right now, the shape of Jarlaxle wasn’t _quite right_ , and it was enough to set those warning bells behind his ears ringing. But then, he’d heard those same bells chiming often at the beginning of their intimacy and had pushed past them to few ill effects.

“I know what my body likes,” Jarlaxle reminded him with a voice like dark honey. He reached up to toy with an earring near the tip of one ear, sending the thinnest shivers of sensation through Artemis’ body, before scraping a fingernail down along the edge of that ear. As Artemis groaned and leaned into that touch, he leaned in to purr in Artemis’ other ear, “I know what feels good.”

Artemis’ hands slid down finally to squeeze the ass in his lap, pulling Jarlaxle’s hips into his.

“Let me make you feel good, Artemis.” Jarlaxle’s teeth pinched his ear, and Artemis would have agreed to anything and everything in that moment.

“How do we want to… um…” Artemis’ tongue felt thick in his mouth, his heart a heavy drumbeat in his ears.

That made Jarlaxle pause, trying to map out the geometry of the situation. “You don’t want to take me, even with the mask on, do you?”

Then it was Artemis’ entire throat that felt thick. “It’s still my body. I can’t…”

“I know. That’s all right. There’s plenty we can still do.”

Artemis doubted “plenty” was the word, no matter how sweetly Jarlaxle said it. There was a disastrous idea forming in the back of his mind, and he would blame it on the drink that he was even acknowledging it, the lightest tremor in his hands as they skated back up Jarlaxle’s back. “You said you know what this body likes,” he murmured in an ear he wished were as pointed as it looked.

“Yes,” Jarlaxle assured him with a heated look.

“Prove it.”

Jarlaxle kissed him again with a sweetness that said he wasn’t getting the message.

“I said _Prove it_ ,” he insisted, giving Jarlaxle a pointed look. “All of it.”

Jarlaxle’s smile stilled, eyes going wide and then narrow. “You don’t mean…?”

Artemis swore under his breath, feeling the heat rise to his face and neck. “ _Yes_. Don’t make me say it.”

“If you can’t say it, I don’t think we should be doing it,” Jarlaxle said, a bit sharply.

“I thought this was what you wanted?” Artemis snapped.

“What I _want_ is for you to be sure, so I don’t end up with a knife in the throat!” Jarlaxle grimaced and shook his head, tone and expression softening as he added, “I don’t want to hurt you. Not like that.”

There was that suffocating, cloying feeling again. Two hands on his cheeks pulled him out of that inner darkness before he could disappear into it.

“What’s different, Artemis?”

_You_ , he thought but didn’t say, biting off the word before it could escape, troubled that it nearly escaped at all. A press of Jarlaxle’s fingers into his face kept his focus on him. Artemis had to scrape the words off the back of his throat. “This is your body, not mine. It is… used to things mine isn’t, and you don’t seem to be in pain when…” The rest of his words stuck there and wouldn’t come out.

Don’t _seem_ … Jarlaxle noted the word choice, the subtle emphasis he suspected Artemis didn’t realize he was putting on those words. Even now he wasn’t sure how much was an act, it seemed.

And he knew Jarlaxle would go to great lengths to not harm his own body.

“Certainly not pain,” Jarlaxle assured him. “Pleasure. Great pleasure. And you want me to show you how good that feels?”

A heavy swallow, and then Artemis admitted, haltingly, “I am… curious.”

A selfish part of Jarlaxle wished they were having this conversation as themselves, wished he could see that raw look on Artemis’ face, could hear him ask this in his own voice. “Curious?” Jarlaxle repeated, tone slip-sliding to coy with the tilt of his lips. A hand sliding down Artemis’ throat could feel the heavy throb of his pulse, could feel his throat muscles swallow.

“I may live to regret it,” Artemis said, a hint of a tease, the ghost of a smile.

Jarlaxle hoped not. But there was no room for any anxiety of his own. “Not this, _ssin’urn._ ” Jarlaxle broke the words with another kiss. “Not this.”

Jarlaxle’s hand skated down Artemis’ chest, felt the flutter of Artemis’ stomach muscles as his hand wandered lower still, skin smoother under his hands than he was used to. He lamented the change even as he observed how the touch felt from this side, the shape and texture of his body from a lover’s perspective. Yes, he could see his own appeal.

Jarlaxle undid the last fastenings of Artemis’ shirt, pushing it and the vest off Artemis’ shoulders. His light touch skimmed over Artemis’ sides, feather-light across his ribs and feeling the shiver that brought, before returning to Artemis’ chest, a light push nudging him back into the sheets. Artemis yielded, but his body was wound tight, hands idly moving up and down Jarlaxle’s thighs.

“Relax, _ssin’urn_ ,” Jarlaxle murmured, unsurprised by the ragged huff that followed. Easier said than done, he knew. He kept his touches light and slow, easy to anticipate, and for all that he knew his own body, he didn’t know it from this angle. He waited until he felt Artemis relax, muscles unwinding in increments, waited until Artemis’ breaths against his lips came out in shivers of sound before his hands slid down, down to open his breeches, still careful, still deliberate. Whenever Artemis started to wind tight again, Jarlaxle paused, fingers mapping safer territory as he kissed away the tension again.

Jarlaxle’s body burned with heat and impatience, but for now it was a secondary concern. For now he took his pleasure in Artemis’ slow, careful surrender, stripping him bare in more ways than one.

“Stop being so careful,” Artemis groused against his lips, and Jarlaxle had to smile at that desperate scrabble for his armor.

“I am being _thorough,_ not careful,” Jarlaxle corrected as he pulled back, grinning when Artemis’ lips chased his, grinning wider still at the scowl that earned him, a scowl that twisted into something curious when Jarlaxle crawled down his body, lips charting a path to his lower belly as he tugged Artemis’ breeches down his hips.

More coiled tension, a ragged breath filled by, “ _Jarlaxle._ ”

“Your lips are not doing anything they have not already done to my body, _abbil,_ ” Jarlaxle assured him, working those bothersome pants off the rest of the way and tossing them off the bed. “Lie back.”

Artemis watched him for a moment, internally debating, before slowly easing back into the mattress. Jarlaxle slithered back up his body, mask a cumbersome weight, and sank into another kiss, fingers finding the smoothness of his scalp and aching to sink instead into Artemis’ thick hair. Artemis’ legs were a warm pressure at his sides, cock hot and heavy between them, but his breathing was a little too fast against Jarlaxle’s cheek.

“Still with me, _mal’ai_?” Jarlaxle asked, using his most insulting petname to keep Artemis grounded.

“Where else would I be?” Artemis grumbled.

“Somewhere warmer, perhaps? You do often complain of these cold climes.” As he spoke, Jarlaxle fished into the discarded vest for the vial of oil he kept there, letting his voice distract Artemis from the weight of what he was doing.

“It is not just ‘cold’, it is unreasonable,” Artemis huffed, fingers tracing shapes into Jarlaxle’s back.

“Hardly. It is uncomfortable, certainly. Unreasonable is how angry your sun is in Calimshan.”

Artemis snorted. “Angry at colorblind drow, perhaps.” At the sound of the vial being uncorked, Artemis’ hands tightened around Jarlaxle’s biceps. “Perhaps you blind it as much as it blinds you.”

Jarlaxle chuckled, dipping his head to nibble at one pointed ear. “Is that what you think, _ssin’urn?_ ”

Artemis shivered, his body arching promisingly. “St… stop calling me that.”

“It is what you are,” Jarlaxle insisted, though he didn’t push. “But, we did decide that _mal’ai_ suited us both, didn’t we?” His body was heavy with want, his own breeches an uncomfortable weight, but he knew he had to do this in steps. He also decided that pinning Artemis with his weight was not likely to end well, not now.

“Particularly you,” Artemis agreed before grunting in surprise when Jarlaxle rolled them both onto their sides. “What…?”

Jarlaxle responded with another kiss, one hand caressing the leg hooked over him and hiking it up higher, over his hip. “Trust me,” Jarlaxle said, his hand moving in circles and working its way down to squeeze one taut buttcheek. “Mm, my ass is nice. You’re welcome.”

The comment was just ridiculous enough to keep Artemis from tensing again, breathing a helpless laugh over Jarlaxle’s collarbone instead. “Honestly?” His breath hitched when one finger brushed experimentally over his hole.

“I am ever honest in my appreciation of my own ass,” Jarlaxle assured him.

That finger slid away and returned again wet. Another shuddering breath against Jarlaxle’s collarbone, another bruising squeeze of Artemis’ fingers.

“Do you not agree?” Jarlaxle said, since the teasing seemed to work earlier. “My ass truly is a thing of beauty. I should commission a sculpture in its honor.” He pressed one finger in to the first knuckle, tilted his head to lick the point of one ear into his mouth. Artemis was tight around his finger, his nails digging crescent-shaped marks into Jarlaxle’s arm. “Still with me?”

Artemis took a few deep, shivering breaths. “In honor of such an ass or in honor of how you are such an ass?”

Jarlaxle chuffed, but Artemis shied away from the puff of hot air against the side of his neck. Jarlaxle turned his head to feather a kiss over Artemis’ cheek, half-expecting to feel the scratch of stubble against his lips. “I suppose they could do both, if my entire figure is commemorated in stone. What a marvelous idea! I shall gift it to you.”

“And I shall break it into pieces,” Artemis growled, voice tight. Jarlaxle’s finger was carefully stroking now, and for once he was grateful for the idiot’s talking. He leaned back just enough to keep Jarlaxle’s face in his line of sight.

Jarlaxle caught that stare and understood, offering Artemis a soft smile and the brush of lips against his. “I suspect I can guess what pieces you would keep.”

“Keep? I would throw the lot of it out the window!”

“Now, now, Artemis, defenestration is a waste of a perfectly good ass!”

Slowly, Artemis’ muscles relaxed around his finger, and Jarlaxle carefully worked in a second and pressed in deeper, still lazily stroking his insides. He slid his free hand under Artemis to hold him close, bringing his fingers up to pinch at his other ear. Artemis choked back a sound—startled or pleasured, Jarlaxle wasn’t sure—and squirmed a bit, the leg over Jarlaxle’s hip adjusting its grip.

Promising, though the death-grip Artemis had on just two fingers said they wouldn’t likely be doing much more tonight. _Leave them wanting more_ , Jarlaxle thought with a soft smile, adjusting the angle of his hips so he could rock against Artemis’ thigh.

“Still with me?” Jarlaxle asked again, pressing his thumb to the soft skin behind his balls, massaging in time to the in-and-out stroke of his finger.

“Stop asking me that,” Artemis snapped before he groaned, unaware of the way his hips had started to move into the sensation.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Before Artemis could growl out a response, Jarlaxle crooked his finger and grinned at the way Artemis’ eyes popped wide, body bucking against him with a sharp intake of breath. When his gaze sharpened back on Jarlaxle’s face, his look was almost accusing, but another press in that exact spot had Artemis’ eyelids fluttering. Another press wrung out another strangled sound, and then Artemis dropped his forehead to Jarlaxle’s collarbone.

“ _Ssin’urn_ ,” Jarlaxle murmured again almost reverently, scissoring their legs together in a way that let Artemis rut against his hip. Artemis was too far gone to snap at him for the endearment, turning his head to press hot, open-mouth kisses to Jarlaxle’s neck as they rocked against each other, Jarlaxle’s fingers following the urgency of his hips.

They were too wound up to last long, Artemis clamping tight around Jarlaxle’s fingers, a strangled sound stoppered against Jarlaxle’s neck as his hips jerked, wetness splashing over Jarlaxle’s belly. Jarlaxle cursed, pulling his finger free to grab Artemis’ ass in both hands, pulling him into each hard shove of his hips until he followed him over.

A moment later, Jarlaxle regretted not taking off his pants. He groaned, sinking into the bed and ignoring the wet discomfort as he leaned back enough to get a closer look at Artemis.

Artemis met that look before his own gaze skittered away, and Jarlaxle could feel as much as see the heat rising to his cheeks. “That was… quick.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Jarlaxle said a bit smugly, completing the statement with a wink. “And that is how it _should_ feel.”

Artemis nodded distractedly, disentangling his legs from Jarlaxle’s. “I gave you permission to…”

“I know. But this isn’t the sort of thing that should be done all at once.”

“Presumptuous,” Artemis huffed, stretching out on his back.

“Perhaps.”

Jarlaxle watched Artemis’ profile, the anxiety knotting his intestines keeping him from enjoying the afterglow. “You are well?”

Artemis blinked, as though only just realizing he had been staring up at the ceiling. He paused to consider the question. “I am well,” he decided, tugging Jarlaxle closer to him. “Though I am never having Gutbuster again.”


	10. Chapter 10

Artemis woke before Jarlaxle, the feeling of being watched a crawling sensation over his skin that pulled him from his reverie. Without moving, he pinched Jarlaxle awake under the covers, and Jarlaxle grunted sleepily in protest, burrowing under Artemis’ chin and into the crook of his shoulder. A harder pinch earned his shoulder an answering bite.

“ _Wake up_ , you idiot,” Artemis hissed in his ear.

Someone cleared his throat behind Artemis, and Jarlaxle’s body went rigid against his.

“I always knew you were vain, Jarlaxle, but this is…” The voice broke off into a mocking laugh, and Artemis looked down enough to tell that Jarlaxle was still wearing the mask.

“Well, what is the point of living, if you can’t love yourself?” Jarlaxle asked, all smiles as he disentangled himself from Artemis and sat up with a languorous stretch that said he was hardly bothered by Gromph’s presence in their bedroom. Artemis smothered a yawn and followed his lead, sitting up against the headboard next to him and keeping the sheets bunched around his hips.

Gromph stood with his hands folded behind his back, adorned in all his archmage finery, black silk robes with runes stitched into the trim in golden thread. Artemis bore his scrutiny head-on with Jarlaxle’s smile, memories of the Underdark, of bowing his head to this very drow, rising like bile up his throat, but he tamped down on his anger. Again.

“Good of you to grace us with your presence, at last,” Artemis said. “How do you fare this fine morn?”

Gromph tilted his head and looked back and forth between him and Jarlaxle. “Dismiss your illusion, Jarlaxle. Oblodra may have time for your games, but I do not.” He put emphasis on Kimmuriel’s destroyed House’s name, enough for Artemis to wonder with a shiver of cold if Kimmuriel were around as well.

“I fear there is no spell to dismiss,” Jarlaxle said with an innocent shrug of his shoulders, and Artemis supposed that was technically true—there was no _spell_ , certainly. “At least not one of illusion.”

Gromph’s face clouded over with some confusion. He continued looking back and forth between them, and Artemis reached up to toy with one his earrings the way he’d watched Jarlaxle do on occasions when he was thinking or bored.

“By Lolth’s eight legs, please tell me you have not figured out how to _clone_ yourself.”

Artemis and Jarlaxle let out matching laughs.

“He sounds so horrified,” Artemis said to Jarlaxle.

“As though that wouldn’t be something truly wonderful,” Jarlaxle replied in like manner.

“Ah,” Gromph said then with a wicked smile. “I had heard you might have Agatha’s Mask. A most fascinating artifact, but this is a much unamusing game. Please tell me the other isn’t the _rivvil_? I would prefer assuming this was an elaborate form of masturbation than bestiality.”

Jarlaxle barked a laugh, while Artemis’ smile turned brittle. “You are one to talk, Gromph. How many demons have you rutted with? And how many legs have they had?”

Gromph chuffed, hardly insulted. “The more limbs, the closer to Lady Lolth,” he answered, and Artemis wasn’t sure if he was speaking seriously or with irony. “And do you really think I wouldn’t recognize my own brother?”

Artemis was so startled by the word _brother_ that he moved a second too late, slapping aside Gromph’s hand but only after it had grabbed at his jaw. Gromph’s face clouded over again, and Jarlaxle only laughed all the harder.

“Ah, my dear Gromph,” said Jarlaxle as he hooked a finger under the mask and pulled it up off his face, “always thinking you know everything…”

Gromph looked sharply between Entreri and Entreri’s smirking face. “ _Explain_.”

“We had an… altercation with a now-deceased wild mage,” Jarlaxle explained. “Our consciousnesses have switched bodies as a result of a spell gone wrong. Or perhaps unintentionally right from her perspective, who knows. There is a chance this was a reaction to a set of rings we had just started wearing that night.” Jarlaxle slid the red-gemmed ring off his finger and tossed it at Gromph, who plucked it from the air.

“And, what? You want me to see if I can reverse it?”

Entreri found Jarlaxle’s eyepatch with his fingers and slid it on while Gromph was examining the ring. The air shimmered around Gromph, blue, red, and green auras overlaid across his person, thick enough to almost obscure his figure, and Entreri wondered just how many protection enchantments the drow wore on him at all times.

“‘If’?” Jarlaxle said, pressing a hand to his chest. “As if there is something the great Archmage of Menzoberranzan can’t do!”

Gromph rolled his eyes at Jarlaxle’s overly dramatic tone. “It’s not a matter of ‘if’, it’s a matter of ‘why’. And truly, that you have come to me at all is interesting—it is your _consciousnesses_ that have switched, you say?”

“For lack of a better understanding,” Jarlaxle admitted with a shrug. “Minds? Spirits? I do not know. I just know that, as much I enjoy this body, I prefer to enjoy it while in my own.”

Gromph’s lip curled in disgust. He tossed back the ring. “You know another better suited for this task, and you know it. Or are you afraid he will pluck the secrets from your brain? I am certain Jarlaxle has many.”

Entreri realized they were talking about Kimmuriel and stiffened. The last thing he wanted was a psionic intrusion into his brain, particularly from someone who had tried to kill him years ago. That Jarlaxle always wore the eyepatch around Kimmuriel said he feared much the same.

Jarlaxle turned the ring over in his hands. “I am certain there are other ways—”

“Perhaps, but I have no interest in finding them. My time is more valuable than anything you have to offer me, though I’ll accept this… entertainment as payment for the advice I give you: talk to your lieutenant, and don’t waste my time.”

Gromph was gone in a whirl of fire before Jarlaxle could argue.

Entreri whirled on Jarlaxle the moment he was gone. “Brother. _Brother?_ ”

“Brother,” Jarlaxle conceded with a sigh.

Entreri was about to ask on which side, before he realized the absurdity of the question. Drow did not care about or measure their lineages through their father’s side. The realization of what that meant was like a hammer between the eyes. “Yvonnel was your _mother_?”

“Biologically.” Jarlaxle kept his tone and expression neutral, even distantly amused, but Artemis did not buy that, not when Jarlaxle was doing everything in his power to avoid eye-contact.

“You’re a Baenre? I thought you were houseless.” Entreri hadn’t meant for the words to sound like an accusation, but that’s how they came out. He’d thought they had that in common, orphan rogues on the street, building an empire from nothing.

Jarlaxle did look up at that, studying Entreri’s posture, his face, as he sat back against the headboard. “So did I, for much of my life. I am Yvonnel’s son, yes, but her _third_ son.”

Jarlaxle tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow like that should mean something, but Artemis just shook his head.

Jarlaxle sighed. “Matrons are expected to sacrifice their third sons, the moment they’re born, in Lolth’s name.” Jarlaxle’s smile did not meet his eyes.

Slowly, Artemis sat back, trying to imagine that expression on the right face, on the face _he_ was wearing. The sun was warm where it hit his shoulder. “Is this the moment I find out I’ve been sleeping with an undead construct?”

Jarlaxle wheezed out a laugh. “No.”

“Then what happened? I imagine Lolth’s retribution would have been severe if she hadn’t followed through. Or is that what happened? Is your existence its own punishment?”

“Yes, yes, you’re hilarious. Though there might be something to what you’re saying. Drizzt was also a third son.”

“Drizzt’s existence punished everyone,” Entreri muttered.

Jarlaxle gave him a wry look.

“So what happened?”

Jarlaxle shrugged. “She tried to kill me. She failed.”

Artemis narrowed his eyes at that explanation.

“Breakfast?” Jarlaxle asked brightly, and Artemis realized he had stumbled on a sore subject.

“About Kimmuriel…”

Jarlaxle’s shoulders sagged, and he sighed again. “Yes, yes. We will… discuss Kimmuriel. I had feared it would come to that. I know how little you like psionic intrusion.”

“How little _I_ like?” Artemis drawled, one finger tapping the eyepatch.

Jarlaxle acquiesced with a shrug. “We are both of us private creatures, and for good reason. But my question still stands.”

“Question?”

Jarlaxle beamed at him. “Breakfast? We need to find out how Lorica fared…”

 

She’d fared well, to go by the hearty cheers from her and Athrogate once Entreri and Jarlaxle wound their way to the tavern. Dwarf and woman sat at the same table as last night, a tall mug and a plate of greasy food in front of each of them.

“Please do not tell me you’re still going,” Entreri said, looking as though he’d aged ten years just by looking at them.

Athrogate barked a laugh and waved a hand at the two empty seats at the table. “Hangover cure,” he said, holding up his tankard and stuffing a sausage into his mouth.

“It would seem his sausage _is_ on the table,” Jarlaxle said in a loud whisper, taking wicked glee in the way it made Athrogate choke.

Lorica pounded on his back to help him clear his airway. “We called it a draw,” she said, grinning through a bite of egg.

“ _How_?” Jarlaxle asked weakly, slumping into his chair.

“I’m part dwarf on my mother’s side,” she said with a shrug.

Entreri eyed Athrogate, sitting back in his chair to stay out of range of his spittle as he ate. “So then you owe us.”

“I owe ye a chance ter _listen_ ,” Athrogate said, holding up one finger. “Didn’ promise more than that!” He slurped down the rest of his tankard. “But I think I can guess. The pally’s lookin’ into what happened ter his niece, and you want me ter… _help._ ”

Jarlaxle signed to Artemis under the table, feeding him his lines, it seemed. Artemis fought the urge to roll his eyes and stayed (mostly) true to what Jarlaxle was telling him to say. “We want you to tell the truth,” he said with just the right amount of innocence.

“The truth?” Athrogate grunted.

“About the allegiances of the group with whom we entered the castle,” Artemis went on, daring to lean in a little and cross his arms over the table. “And about the Guild’s foolish attempt at a coup.”

“Wha…?” Athrogate looked from one face to the next. “Coup? What coup?”

“The one planned for three nights from now,” Jarlaxle said.

Across from him, he saw Lorica’s eyebrow twitch, but she stayed quiet.

Athrogate rocked back in his chair. “Now why would I deliver _that_ message?”

“So the ‘pally’ will spare you,” Artemis said, meeting Athrogate’s stare, “when he retaliates.”

Athrogate drummed his fingers on the table, his gaze darting for the door as though he wished his whole body could follow. “Ye have been schemin’, haven’ ye?”

“It’s what he does best,” Jarlaxle said, drawing a wry look from Artemis in his body. “Well. One of the things he does best.” Jarlaxle slid a smirk Artemis’ way that was anything but subtle.

“We have just given you the means to stay out of the conflict to follow, whichever way it turns,” Entreri said. “Do with it what you will. Or you can keep sitting here, drinking your life away.”

Athrogate fumbled for a response, but the other three stood. Lorica picked up the rest of her sausage to carry with her. Jarlaxle clapped a hand on Athrogate’s shoulder on his way out the door.

“Three days?” she said as she chewed, once they were back in their room, gathering up the last of their things. “You told me two.”

“You didn’t think we’d be entirely honest with him, did you?” Jarlaxle said, reaching into his Bag of Holding to pull free the mask. He held it tight between his hands a moment before handing it over, ignoring Artemis’ stare boring into the side of his face. “Two days. You remember what to do?”

Lorica nodded, dark eyes burning with an almost unsettling light as she folded the mask under her palm. “Everything.”

“Good. I will have Piter pick up the mask at the appointed drop-off point. Do know that I will follow you if you attempt to run off with it.” Another moment of hesitation, and then Jarlaxle decided on another gamble, reaching back into the bag to pull out Lorica’s mace. Lorica’s eyes shone at the sight, hand curling almost reverently around the handle. Next to him Artemis stiffened, but Jarlaxle was never one to send his agents into battle unprepared. “I took the liberty of having it cleaned.”

Lorica’s nod was almost a bow. “Thank you.”

“With any luck, we’ll never see each other again,” Jarlaxle said with a wry smile. “May good fortune follow you, whatever happens.”

He almost reached up to tip his hat, only to remember it wasn’t there. Entreri didn’t bother, merely turning on his heel and walking from the room. Downstairs, Athrogate was already gone.

“Now what?” Entreri asked, grip tightening and loosening around Charon’s Claw. He didn’t much like leaving things to chance—or, worse, to other people—but he had no choice in the matter.

Jarlaxle smiled. “Now, we find someplace to wait. And, I suppose, a place to talk to your best friend.”

Entreri groaned at the mention of Kimmuriel. “Wonderful.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.  
> I've finally written the rest of this damn thing, which means back to weekly updates until it's done! :D

They kept the Nightmares to a slow walk. They didn’t want to put too much distance between themselves and Heliogabalus, merely needed to lay low for a day or so until everything was in place, so Jarlaxle was taking a moment to appreciate the stillness and the fresh air, occasionally checking the compact in his hand. Inside the mirror wasn’t his reflection but the inside of a foaming mug passing just in and out of sight, and Jarlaxle let out an amused huff. Athrogate was ever predictable.

Next to him, Artemis was… whatever Artemis was whenever they traveled along long stretches of road like this, his expression closed off and inscrutable. Jarlaxle was almost annoyed to find that that scowl almost came across as a pout on his own more delicate features.

“I know you enjoy admiring yourself,” Artemis sighed, breaking the companionable silence, “but staring is considered rude up here on the surface.”

Jarlaxle chuckled softly, looking down at his squarer, gloved hands where they grasped the reins and mirror. “Last night,” he began, only to trail off.

Artemis didn’t react, except for the barest stiffening of his back.

Jarlaxle decided to just get it out. “Is a repeat performance out of the question?”

At that, Artemis did react, shifting in his saddle in an almost full-body squirm. His ears twitched in a way he hadn’t grown up learning to curb, an open expression of embarrassment and uncertainty in contrast to Artemis’ carefully constructed mask of indifference. “You… gave Lorica the mask.”

“Ah.” Jarlaxle tried not to let too much disappointment into his expression. He supposed he had been lucky enough to get what he did.

“But… no,” Artemis said haltingly, tilting his head to the side but not actively looking at Jarlaxle. “It is… not _entirely_ out of the question.”

Jarlaxle’s face split in a grin. He watched Artemis’ borrowed ears twitch again, once, twice, earrings clinking, and there was something terribly endearing in that. Even when they switched back, a part of him wished Artemis could keep the pointed ears.

Jarlaxle pulled his horse to a stop.

“Not right _now_ ,” Artemis said as he slowed to a stop as well, turning to throw Jarlaxle a bewildered look over his shoulder.

Jarlaxle laughed. “A shame, but no.” He brandished the compact. “It seems Athrogate has made a friend.”

“While that is a rare occurrence worth commemorating, I do not see why we need to stop.”

“A particularly _special_ friend,” Jarlaxle replied.

“I definitely do not want to stop for that.”

Jarlaxle swatted a hand through the air in Artemis’ direction. “Not that kind of friend! Look.”

Artemis maneuvered his Nightmare as close to Jarlaxle’s as the stubborn beast would allow and peered at the compact Jarlaxle held out to him. The image inside looked out over a rooftop to an ice-blue sky but focused on a wiry man with dirty, tattered robes and a penetrating stare.

“Do you know who that is?” Jarlaxle asked.

Artemis wished the image were facing the other way so he could try to read Athrogate’s lips and figure out what he was saying. The man in the image just stared, only speaking occasionally. “Your next fashion project?”

Jarlaxle laughed, then paused and tilted his head, much too intrigued by the suggestion. “Perhaps. But more importantly, that’s Kane, close friend and confidant of the king.”

Artemis took another look at the compact. “Really? And he dresses like that?”

“ _Now_ you sound like me! And don’t underestimate him. He is, by all accounts, a fierce warrior.”

Artemis’ hum was unimpressed. “So you think the dwarf has done as we’ve asked? Told him about Ellery’s connection to the Guild?”

“Either that, or he’s betrayed us,” Jarlaxle said much too cheerfully. “Impossible to tell, really. This magic has its limits.”

“Wonderful,” Entreri grumbled.

“And now we wait on Lorica…” Jarlaxle tapped the mirror with a finger, and the image shifted to the inside of the inn they’d left.

“And she doesn’t know you planted that enchantment on her as well?”

“Of course not.”

It took Jarlaxle a moment to decode the look Artemis was giving him. “Don’t worry, _abbil_ ; I have tried no such trick with you,” he lied.

Entreri’s hum was unconvinced.

They continued on, Nightmare hooves pawing sparks at the ground impatiently as they kept their pace slow, unhurried. After a time, Artemis spoke again.

“There is a flaw in your plan.”

Jarlaxle tilted his head in Artemis’ direction. “Oh?”

“We are relying too much on Lorica,” he said. “Should her hate for Gareth prove stronger than her desire to help us—or to live—she could find a different face, one that would bring her closer to the king. There are wards of detection throughout the castle, true, but Agatha’s Mask cannot be detected through normal means. We may have just given her the tool to _actually_ _succeed_.”

“Perhaps,” Jarlaxle said, hardly sounding concerned. “If so, she is unlikely to leave the place alive, and it would be simple enough to ascribe her to the Citadel of Assassins posthumously, particularly if Athrogate has done as agreed. There are many fanatically loyal to Gareth who would desire blood, after that. We would have our war, either way.” He shrugged. “We might even have it more easily, but that seems a waste.”

Entreri huffed, shaking his head. He paused to adjust the way the hat sat, and Jarlaxle itched to reach over and fix the angle. “It still leaves too much to chance.”

“There’s no pleasure in rolling the dice if you always know which side will come up.”

“I don’t gamble.”

Jarlaxle chuckled. “Ah, sure you do, _ma’lai_. Just not with coin.”

Artemis looked at him curiously, but Jarlaxle just smiled, gray eyes still softer than they had any right to be. Then he looked past Artemis and tipped his head in that direction. “That seems as dry a place as we’re going to find, if you should like to set up camp?”

“Getting saddle-sore?” Artemis drawled.

Jarlaxle lowered his eyelids and smirked—a distinctly Jarlaxle expression no matter whose features it was on—and retorted, “Are you?”

Which drew Artemis’ attention again to the night before. He felt heat waft up under his collar, ears twitching as he shot Jarlaxle a glare. Jarlaxle cackled and slipped from his mount, a simple command reducing the Nightmare to a small, obsidian figurine. Artemis continued riding, looking as though he planned to leave Jarlaxle behind.

“Where are you going?” Jarlaxle shouted after him, voice wavering around a laugh.

“To find my lost sanity!”

“Then you will be riding for quite a while!” Jarlaxle called after Artemis’ retreating back. He planted his hands on his hips. “I have the tent, you know!”

“Then you can pitch it alone this time!” Artemis called back, without turning around.

Jarlaxle chuckled and shook his head. “Bring firewood when you get back!”

Artemis pretended not to hear as he turned a corner, and Jarlaxle huffed at being so ignored. “Honestly,” he muttered, exchanging the compact and Nightmare for the tent in his pouch.

Artemis chuckled, hearing Jarlaxle’s indignant huff even at this distance. He finally pulled the Nightmare to a stop, not wanting to put too great a distance between them even to nettle Jarlaxle. The air was suddenly sharp with magic, the lightning strike of it prickling his nose, but that wasn’t so strange, surrounded as he was by Jarlaxle’s toys. He assumed Jarlaxle had summoned the tent, and he banished the Nightmare with a curt command, tucking the model into his pocket.

His spine prickled and his ears twitched, hearing a tread that wasn’t Jarlaxle’s—or his, technically—and suddenly he was on the alert, slipping into the trees and backtracking to where Jarlaxle was.

Jarlaxle heard the sound as well, but he still hadn’t gotten used to judging distances with his human hearing and so was startled when he turned and found a pair of figures almost directly behind him. A wizard with a wiry beard looked down at the mud on his robe’s finely stitched hem with distaste, while next to him a man in rags stood barefoot in the muck and hardly seemed to notice. Jarlaxle recognized that man from a glimpse into his mirror not an hour before, and he greeted the pair with a smile even as he tucked a dagger into his palm.

With a command, he bade the tent to stop growing behind him.

“Good afternoon,” Jarlaxle bade them cheerfully, deciding that keeping character would likely end in a diplomatic nightmare. “How can I be of service?”

“Where is your partner?” the man in rags asked.

“Now, now, there’s no need to skip over the pleasantries!” Jarlaxle protested.

“There is nothing pleasant about this!” the wizard snapped. “Now where is the drow?”

It took Jarlaxle a moment to remember that he _wasn’t_ drow. He made a show out of looking around and shrugging, but out of the corner of his eye, he assessed his potential exits. “You tell me. It seems he has abandoned me.”

The wizard narrowed his eyes. “Then who were you talking to just now?”

“Myself, mostly. Half the time when I think I’m talking to him, he’s already walked away.”

“We have ways of making you tell us the truth, Artemis Entreri.”

Jarlaxle just shrugged again. “That sounds redundant. But I wish you the best of luck in finding him.” He gave them an exaggerated bow and turned back to the tent, pulling up one flap.

“Where are you going?” the wizard sputtered. “We are not done, here!”

“No?” Jarlaxle turned an exasperated look his way. “Your interest is in my companion, and he is not here.”

“Our interest is in you _both_!”

Jarlaxle crossed his arms with a huff. “Then I’m offended you’ve only been asking about him.”

The wizard gaped at him, sputtering some more as he gestured wildly with one hand. “You’re already here! Why would I ask where you are?”

“You could ask me other things! How I am, for instance. Which brings us back to why it’s important to never skip over the pleasantries.”

The wizard turned an exasperated look at his partner, who was just watching in distant amusement.

“Is he always this rude?” Jarlaxle asked the man in rags.

A blade pressed at Jarlaxle’s back. This time he hadn’t heard anyone approach at all. “He is when someone makes an attempt on the king’s life,” said the man behind him, voice an unfriendly growl at his ear. “And let me tell you: next to me, he’s downright courteous.”

Jarlaxle held still, dropping the dagger, hands slowly rising to the air, but that didn’t stop the man from wrenching one arm behind him.

“I do hope that’s a dagger you’re jabbing me with,” Jarlaxle joked through a wince. That earned him a punch to the kidney that sent him gagging.

“Mouthy little man, isn’t he?” asked the burly man behind him. That must be Olwen, the group’s ranger.

“And yet, miraculously, he has said absolutely nothing,” the wizard drawled.

Entreri watched from the shadows—or rather from inside a tree, having activated the hat’s enchantment, one that had saved Jarlaxle from an avalanche not so long ago. Everything felt strange, the bark rough and cold where it enveloped him, and he could barely feel the pressure of his jaw when he gritted his teeth.

He knew they shouldn’t have trusted the dwarf. He scanned their enemies for weapons, but he could find none on Kane.

He caught a message in the flash of Jarlaxle’s fingers: _Don’t attack._

He signed it over and over again.

_We will have an entire kingdom after us. We can salvage this. Don’t attack._

A part of Entreri wanted to attack just to be contrary, but he knew Jarlaxle was right. These were Gareth’s closest friends and confidants, the ones who had been at his side when he’d earned the title “dragonsbane”.

“We should just kill him and be done with it,” Olwen growled with a surprising amount of animosity.

“No,” said Kane.

“He’s a threat to the crown!” Olwen argued. “He has to pay for Mariabronne’s murder!”

“Mariabronne?” Jarlaxle blurted, as confused as Entreri. He knew they were under suspicion for Ellery’s death, but…

Another punch to the kidney made Jarlaxle grimace.

“Don’t waste your breath denying it, _assassin_ ,” Olwen growled in his ear.

Olwen had trained Mariabronne and by all accounts had loved him like a son. Jarlaxle acknowledged that… this could be a problem.

Entreri tensed to disobey Jarlaxle’s command.

_Don’t_ , said Jarlaxle’s fingers, though there was no way for Jarlaxle to know where he was or what he was thinking. It irked him that the damn (not)drow knew him that well.

“We still need to find the drow,” Kane answered. “It is up to the king to decide judgment after that.”

Olwen growled through his teeth, but it was a growl of frustration, not defiance.

“I am certain we can straighten this out nicely,” Jarlaxle said, voice far too even, too light. “If you conducted a proper investigation into what happened at the tower, you would find—”

Another punch from Olwen shut him up again. Entreri made a note to stab Olwen in exactly the spot he kept hitting.

The wizard sighed, casting as he turned. Sparks danced from his fingers as he drew a portal in the air. “We might need a gag for this one.”

Alarm rang between Entreri’s ears as he watched them shove Jarlaxle-in-his-body through the portal. He prayed that the fool had a plan.

 

There was always a certain indignity in this, in being manhandled and examined, his magical items stripped from him and inspected one at a time, and Jarlaxle spared a moment to wonder wryly how long this would have taken if he’d had his own body and its usual wardrobe. Artemis’ jeweled dagger was the first to go, the wizard—who his friends called Emelyn—turning it over in his hands as his eyebrows crept towards his hairline, and Jarlaxle winced as it disappeared into a pouch at his belt. That would complicate any escape attempt, as Artemis would eviscerate him if he lost that dagger.

Next went the bracers, then the earrings and bracelets, then the cloak, the boots, and the belt. “Shirt off, too,” said Emelyn.

“You could at least buy me a drink first.”

The wizard gave him an unimpressed look.

“The magic is purely defensive! I don’t see what the point of—!”

“ _Off_.”

Jarlaxle sighed and pulled the shirt up over his head. The air was cold on his skin, the stone cold under his feet, and he shivered, the winter damp doing him no favors. “Would you like the pants as well?”

Emelyn scowled at him. “Are they enchanted?”

“No, but what they hold is magic.” Jarlaxle winked. Emelyn just gave him a disgusted look. A guard tossed Jarlaxle another shirt, this one scratchy and smelling faintly of someone else’s sweat. Jarlaxle made a face, but it was too cold to forego a shirt just on principle. “You couldn’t have found anything more fashionable?”

“Anything else?” Kane asked Emelyn from where he watched the proceedings.

“Rings,” Emelyn said.

With a pang of regret, Jarlaxle slipped off the red-gemmed ring. “I’m afraid all that’s left is my dignity.”

“And your head, but that might change soon,” Olwen snarled.

Jarlaxle reflected wryly that that was the sort of thing Artemis would say.

Then came more manhandling, Olwen’s hands rough and his demeanor rougher as he shoved Jarlaxle into a cell, Jarlaxle’s bare feet slapping on bare stone as he struggled to keep up. He was still misjudging this body’s balance, the heavier distribution of muscle, and he stumbled under Olwen’s last shove as the door slammed shut with a screech Jarlaxle could feel in his teeth.

A narrow window let in a sliver of light, bright enough for Jarlaxle to figure out it faced west and helping him fill in the mental map of where he was in the castle, but otherwise the room was dark in a way he’d never experienced, like something had smudged out all the places the light didn’t touch. He knew humans couldn’t naturally see in the dark, and though he understood what pitch-blackness was from the globes of darkness, this sort of gradient was new and odd. This wasn’t at all what he’d pictured human vision to be like.

“Oh, this is strange,” he murmured, keeping his eyes wide as though that could help.

“ _Bah_!”

Jarlaxle jumped, eyes finally adjusting enough to make out the hairy little figure in the corner. Athrogate shifted with a clink of chains.

“Ah,” Jarlaxle said, meeting Athrogate’s scowl. “I take it you weren’t the one who gave us away after all.” Not unless this was an elaborate ruse to find Artemis, that is.

“Shoulda known better’n ter trust the pair o’ ye. And now you’re in here without yer drow but stuck with me. _Bwahaha_!”

Jarlaxle grimaced. This was around the point Artemis would start threatening murder. “What happened?” he asked, padding across the cell to slip to the floor a respectful distance from Athrogate. The stone was cold at his back even with the borrowed shirt.

“Ye tell me,” Athrogate groused. His black hair was even more wild and unkempt than usual, sticking up in tufts. “Someone must’ve gotten ter them first. Said my thing ter Kane. He left. Next I know, wizard’s dropping my ass here.”

“I see.”

“Where’s yer drow?”

Jarlaxle shrugged. “Not here. That’s as far as I know.” He could feel the weight of Athrogate’s stare. “What?”

“Ye’re a lot less murdery than usual, Entreri.” He looked Jarlaxle up and down. “They do something to ye? Kane has this weird monk thing he does…”

Jarlaxle wasn’t sure how to interpret the way Athrogate chopped his hand through the air, but he knew being Entreri here wouldn’t do him any good.

“I’m Jarlaxle.”

“Eh?”

“I’m Jarlaxle. In Artemis’ body. We were switched by magic.”

Athrogate’s face twisted while he tried to puzzle this out. “Ye two are into some weird shit.”

“We didn’t switch on _purpose_.”

“Eh?”

Jarlaxle pinched the bridge of his nose and waved a hand. “Rings, wild magic. It’s a long story.”

“Huh. Guess that explains why ye kept callin’ ‘im ‘Artemis’ after only two drinks in.”

Jarlaxle opened and closed his mouth. “…That was only two drinks?”

Athrogate let out another guffaw with a spray of spittle. “Two drinks. I about expected the drow to go down, but a _human_ …!”

“Tell me about it,” Jarlaxle groused. “He didn’t drink _at all_ before I met him, apparently.”

“And now yer drivin’ him ter drink?”

Jarlaxle pursed his lips and ducked his head, accepting that he’d walked into that comment. “Now I can coax him into a glass or two of wine or ale _occasionally_ , but that’s it.”

“He’s a bit tightly wound, i’n he?”

Jarlaxle hummed wryly. “You should have seen the way he was when I met him.”

He’d been young, coldly vicious in a way any drow would respect, with a talent only one drow could match. And a part of Jarlaxle had reveled in that, in how _angry_ it had made his fellows that a “mere human” less than three decades old—a child, in their eyes—could fight better than they could after centuries of training.

He’d had no idea…

“Think he’ll come for ye?” Athrogate asked, eyeing Jarlaxle’s borrowed profile.

“I imagine he’ll want this body back, if nothing else.” Jarlaxle offered him a wry smile. “I just hope he doesn’t do anything too foolish.”

Or, at least, that Jarlaxle had a chance to speak to the king, first.

 

Entreri sat in the tent and stewed, waiting out the king’s scouts he knew were still combing the woods. Tucked in this interdimensional pocket, they wouldn’t find him, not unless he stepped outside.

He turned the red-gemmed ring over in his hands, slipping it on and off his finger, trying to sense _something,_ to understand what the damn drow was doing, but right now it was just cold metal. “Dammit,” he muttered, keeping it on his finger just in case.

Entreri needed to do something, needed to get Jarlaxle back if only to wring his fool neck, but he was at a distinct disadvantage: stuck in a drow body, without the mask, without any other illusions, and without Jarlaxle’s natural charm. He’d be easy to spot and easy to apprehend.

It occurred to Entreri that the only person willing to help a drow would, perhaps, be another drow. Before they stabbed that first drow in the back. He rolled Kimmuriel’s whistle between his fingers, wondering if that inevitable backstabbing was worth his aid.

Probably not, but what choice did he have?

He took the chance that Gareth’s men were no longer in the area and tore out of the tent, whistle at his lips before he could talk himself out of it. He puffed, but there was no sound, none that he could hear anyway, and he kept puffing until Kimmuriel appeared, glaring at Entreri through an open portal. He didn’t walk through, squinting into the sunlight.

“Jarlaxle,” he said, voice carefully monotone, “what in Lolth’s name do you need that is worth making me deaf?” He gestured at the whistle still between Entreri’s lips.

Entreri blew the whistle one last time just to watch him grimace before letting it drop back to his chest. “Gareth’s men have taken Artemis, and I need your help.”

Kimmuriel didn’t so much as blink. “No.”

“No?”

“I am not angering the king of Damara just because you misplaced your toy. I am not wasting the assets.”

“Entreri _is_ an asset,” Entreri protested, fighting to keep his voice measured while his blood boiled.

“I am not having this argument again, Jarlaxle. My answer is no, now if that is all—”

“I _am_ Entreri!” Entreri blurted. “It’s Jarlaxle they’ve taken.”

That made Kimmuriel pause. Eyeing Entreri, he finally stepped through the portal. “Jarlaxle would not just hand over the eyepatch—”

Entreri flipped the eyepatch up over his eye, giving Kimmuriel the full force of his glare, and that look alone would have clued in Kimmuriel to the truth. Entreri felt the prod of Kimmuriel’s consciousness against his, and he allowed it a brief brush before throwing up his mental walls and snapping the eyepatch back over his eye.

Kimmuriel just studied him for a long moment. “What did you do?”

“Does it matter?” Entreri snapped. “If we get Jarlaxle back, can you fix it?”

“Potentially,” Kimmuriel replied. That was about as positive as Entreri was expecting Kimmuriel to be.

“Then we must get the idiot out before he annoys Gareth into executing him.”

“We?” Kimmuriel scoffed.

That brought Entreri up short. “He’s the leader of Bregan D’aerthe,” he reminded—warned—Kimmuriel.

“Right now, _I_ am the leader of Bregan D’aerthe,” Kimmuriel reminded him in much the same tone. “I already said I will not risk war with Gareth, and I am not sacrificing valuable soldiers for this. Jarlaxle made his bed. Let him lie in it.”

Frustration and panic warred for Artemis’ attention, and he paced like a caged tiger if only to restrain himself from strangling Kimmuriel. “Fine. Don’t risk war. Open a portal, and I can pluck him out.”

“Why?”

“Because it is simpler,” Entreri snapped.

“You misunderstand—why should I bother?”

Entreri growled but reined himself in. He needed Kimmuriel, as much as it galled him to admit it. “Because you may be acting leader of Bregan D’aerthe, but it’s not a position you truly want. If you did, you would have taken care of Jarlaxle when you had the opportunity.”

“The Jarlaxle I once knew I would gladly follow,” Kimmuriel admitted. “But he has been distracted and erratic since he came to the surface. It was convenient to blame his distraction on Crenshinibon, but I am beginning to suspect it has more to do with you.”

Entreri barked a laugh. “I’m flattered.”

“You’re a distraction,” Kimmuriel corrected, and in a tone that said he would happily change that.

Entreri’s neck prickled with the weight of danger. “Right now it seems that ‘distraction’ is the only thing between him and execution.”

“A situation he was only in because of you.”

“Right, yes, I should have left him in your and Rai’guy’s capable hands.” Entreri was an inch away from sneering. He took it as a small victory that Kimmuriel didn’t have an immediate response to that.

“‘Mutual benefit’,” Kimmuriel reminded Entreri, looking away from him as though unsure how to address a _rivvil_ in a drow body. This was the most civil Entreri had ever seen him. “That is Jarlaxle’s credo. Where is the benefit in this?”

Entreri chewed that over. “So it is a matter of payment.”

Kimmuriel shrugged, stepping back through the portal. “I suppose. But what payment would be worth such a risk?”

Entreri felt the weight of the dracolich skull in his vest pocket where before there had been nothing. If there was someone he trusted less than Jarlaxle with such an item, it was Kimmuriel, and yet… “Wait.”

Kimmuriel turned to quirk an eyebrow at him through the portal. Entreri held up the phylactery for him to see. “What’s this?”

“Payment,” Entreri answered. “Once Jarlaxle has returned, it is yours.”

He waited for Kimmuriel to ask what it was, but from the way he had a hard time pulling his stare away, Entreri suspected he already knew.

“You understand what you are offering?”

“You understand what I am asking?”

Entreri held his stare, the gem skull in his hand refracting light in a way that made it glow, sending shards of color dancing over his obsidian skin.

Kimmuriel offered him a barely perceptible nod. “I cannot open a portal directly into the castle,” he warned. “Nor will my men march on it.”

Entreri frowned but nodded. Then he smiled, a grim, terrifying thing even on Jarlaxle’s more delicate features. “Then perhaps they can march on someone else.”

 

Within the hour, the Citadel of Assassins was aswarm with dark elves, leaving a swath of red leading up to Knellict’s office. They’d had no chance to predict, no chance to prepare, well-guarded against threats from outside but not from below.

Knellict’s eyes were wide like a cornered animal’s when Entreri stalked through the door, and even Jarlaxle’s underlings parted for him in the wake of that glare. Knellict threw a flaming arrow at Entreri’s head, and Entreri caught the spell in his gauntlet, never slowing, never blinking, until he had the archmage crowded against the wall. He watched through the eye-patch as Bregan D’aerthe’s mages stripped the magical protections from his body, and there was something satisfying about seeing a haughty mage like Knellict reduced to a shivering pile of robes.

“You can’t kill us all!” he said with one last bit of bravado, eyes darting down to the red-bladed sword Entreri held in his hand. “There are too many of us! You will—!”

“We already have,” Entreri calmly cut him off, prodding at the last thin veil of protection shielding Knellict’s body and watching it stretch and strain against Charon’s Claw. Knellict pressed himself tighter against the wall. “Killed them, that is. Or at least the ones too stupid to know when they’ve lost. The others we’ll keep on a… probationary period.”

“Probationary?” Knellict asked, voice shaking.

Entreri’s grin was not friendly. “They have not yet outlived their usefulness. Have you, Knellict?”

He rested Claw’s blade against Knellict’s throat, the cold of the metal against his skin telling him his protections were gone. Entreri pretended not to notice Kimmuriel standing at his shoulder, shoving down the spike of irritation at being so watched.

“No,” Knellict choked out.

“Good,” said Entreri, slowly withdrawing his blade, “because I might just have one more use for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sweeps 75% of the plot of RotP under the rug*


	12. Chapter 12

The appearance of torchlight was a strange relief to Jarlaxle. So were the shackles, if it meant he’d get to be away from Athrogate’s rhyming for a bit.

“Aye, take ‘im away!” Athrogate guffawed as the guards shoved Jarlaxle through the door. “There’s a price he will pay! _Bwahaha_!”

Arthogate’s eyes were a crazed red in the torchlight before the door slammed shut on his cackles.

This time Jarlaxle was man-handled upstairs, the guards’ gauntlets biting into his arms as dark dungeons turned into marble floors and graceful pillars. He offered a smile and a wink to a pair of serving women who stopped to stare before he was unceremoniously shoved into the throne room.

Catching his balance, Jarlaxle looked up at the assembled personages, the whole of Gareth’s dragon-slaying collective arranged around the throne, and Jarlaxle supposed it must be a serious matter, indeed, if they were all here. In the center, Gareth watched him with more bemusement and less outrage than Jarlaxle had expected. Good. It was easier to reason with a cool head.

“Are all of you here for me?” Jarlaxle asked with pasted-on innocence.

“Sir Artemis,” Gareth began.

“He is not deserving of that title,” Olwen spat. At a withering look from Gareth, his mouth snapped shut. “Apologies, Your Majesty.”

“Sir Artemis,” Gareth began again. “You understand why you are here?”

“Not in the slightest,” Jarlaxle replied with a shrug. “Though a few of your companions leveled some fairly serious accusations at my head.

“Deserved,” said the severe woman to Gareth’s left—Queen Christine, Jarlaxle recalled from Artemis’ knighting ceremony.

“Hardly.”

“Please help me understand,” Gareth said, frustration tightening his voice. “First you thwart an assassination attempt upon my person, then you instigate one, hiring the very same assassin. I knighted you. I heaped you with honors, elevated your station…”

Jarlaxle bit his tongue against a sardonic laugh, thankful, for the moment, that _he_ was the one in Artemis’ body. After that little speech, Artemis would have verbally eviscerated the man and gotten them both hanged.

“And what makes you think I have done such a thing?” Jarlaxle asked calmly.

“We have your would-be assassin,” Gareth said.

A tip of his head drew Jarlaxle’s attention to a group of figures shadowed by the colonnade. Lorica stood between a pair of guards, wearing chains and no mask, her eyes burning with rage as she stared out at nothing. Just to the side of them, a balding old man watched the proceedings. He rubbed his hands and fidgeted, and when he locked eyes with Jarlaxle, a hand jumped to his beard, nervously tugging at the hairs.

Jarlaxle smiled softly to himself, a suspicion confirmed.

He considered denying further, insisting he’d had no contact with Lorica and no part in this scheme, but he knew that’d only end with them shoving a truth potion down his throat. He hated the way those things tasted.

“You’re welcome,” Jarlaxle said instead with a tip of his head.

Confusion clouded Gareth’s brow. “‘You’re welcome’?”

“Well, yes,” Jarlaxle said innocently, as though what he was about to explain should be obvious. “She’s the outlaw you tried to capture months ago, is she not? And now you have her.”

“Because she was attempting a second assassination attempt,” Gareth said slowly, “which you helped her with.”

Jarlaxle tutted. “And was there any chance of that attempt succeeding?”

Gareth and Kane exchanged glances. “No,” said Kane.

Jarlaxle shrugged, beaming as though that should settle it. “Exactly. Sending her to you seemed less messy than trying to drag her in.”

“I don’t believe a word of this,” Christine huffed, looking at her husband.

Gareth gestured gently for her to be quiet. He looked over at the old man expectantly.

“That’s a bold-faced lie, Your Majesty,” he said. “They had the woman under some sort of _geas_. Maybe both times!”

“Now _that_ is a bold-faced lie,” Jarlaxle shot back, but with more amusement than anger. So _that_ was his angle. “Or shall we both swallow truth potions and prove it?” he said, calling the old man’s bluff.

“Th-that shouldn’t be necessary.”

“Maybe we should—” Gareth began, only to stop, the sounds of shouting reaching them from the hall. His hand dropped to the sword at his side, and likewise his companions immediately fell into battle poses.

The doors burst open, and in walked Entreri-in-Jarlaxle’s body, wearing the outrageous purple hat and a scowl that could boil water, while a pair of guards trailed behind him, trying to free their arms from the goop that had trapped them to their sides.

Olwen started to draw his sword, but Gareth held out a hand for them to stay their ground.

“You better not have confessed to anything stupid,” Entreri shot at Jarlaxle on his way by.

“And you better not be _doing_ anything stupid,” Jarlaxle hissed in response, even as he was deliriously glad to see him.

“That is quite close enough!” Christine boomed, and Entreri glared at her, taking another two steps before stopping just in front of the dais.

“Your Majesty,” he said with little inflection and a sarcastic tip of his hat. “After all we did to preserve your life and the safety of your people, you dare accuse my associate and myself of trying to _assassinate_ you? To say that I am insulted does not even come close!”

Gareth looked to his companions, looking flummoxed. “Your companion just confessed to—!”

“A man will confess to anything under fear of death,” Entreri interrupted, ignoring the way that made both Olwen and Christine bristle. “And, to be blunt, my companion is an idiot.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Jarlaxle drawled.

Gareth pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Just how many more versions of this story are we going to hear?”

“Just the one,” said Entreri, pulling off the hat and pulling out the dimensional hole Jarlaxle had left behind at the campsite. The companions tensed again, but he just threw the hole to the floor, letting it expand into a pit. “His.”

Emelyn padded over to the ledge and peered over. He gasped. “Is that—?”

“Knellict, Archmage of the Citadel of Assassins, yes.” Entreri held Gareth’s stare as he spoke. “Whom I have brought before you, alive, at no small expense to myself, to prove the innocence of a man _you_ knighted.”

Behind him, Emelyn dispelled the goop and ordered the guards to seize the broken man huddling in the pit. Jarlaxle watched it all in amazement.

“Feed him a truth potion, and he will tell you everything,” Entreri said with such conviction that even Jarlaxle believed him.

Gareth nodded at Kane, who bowed and followed the guards and Knellict out the door. Gareth sighed, rubbing at the growing tightness in his forehead. “And I suppose he will confess to putting the woman under a geas?”

Entreri blinked, darting a questioning look at Jarlaxle, who shrugged. “I cannot attest to that, and I honestly don’t care. I can only tell you that you have wrongly pursued me and imprisoned my companion.”

“But Mariabronne—” Olwen started to protest.

“Ran ahead and fell victim to his own arrogance,” Entreri cut him off with a withering look.

Jarlaxle cleared his throat and added, “He died heroically at the hands of demons, slaughtering them even as he bled out. But he _did_ face them alone because he wandered off ahead of the group. We would have helped him if we could.”

Entreri rolled his eyes.

“And Ellery?” Christine prompted, sitting ramrod straight in her throne.

Entreri gave her another unfriendly smile. “You should ask Knellict about Ellery while you have him.”

Gareth sat back, just studying Entreri for a long moment. To the side, the old man looked nervously between them and the door.

“I’ll wait,” Entreri said sweetly, pulling a chair out of the portable hole and making himself comfortable.

Christine looked imploringly at her husband, who simply shrugged and let out a helpless chuckle. “Stand down,” he told the guards flanking Jarlaxle. They stopped hovering but still stayed close. Jarlaxle rolled his shoulders as best he could with the shackles chaining his wrists together.

“I don’t suppose you have another chair?” he asked Entreri.

“No,” Entreri lied, staring at Gareth and barely blinking.

Gareth didn’t squirm, but Jarlaxle could tell from the tension in his shoulders that that was because he was trying not to. After some time, Kane returned, his expression quietly pensive but otherwise impossible to read. He bowed low in front of the king and didn’t so much as glance at Jarlaxle or Entreri.

“Knellict has confessed to ordering the assassination. His orders had been to find someone outside of the Citadel to divert blame if anything went wrong, but he had no direct connection with Lorica. He also admitted that he had been using Ellery as a spy for many years.”

Christine gasped, clapping a hand to her chest.

“He also confessed to putting a bounty on Sir Artemis’ head.” He slid a look over to Entreri. “Though oddly, he has no memory of how he came to be in Jarlaxle’s hands.”

“How strange,” Entreri drawled. “We may leave now, yes?”

Gareth sat back, digesting this. “That still does not explain your involvement with Lorica,” he said, though more curiously than accusatorily.

“If I may, Your Majesty,” Jarlaxle cut in politely. “We had caught wind of her presence in the city but had in fact discovered that she was influenced by some sort of strong magic during her last assassination attempt. We were trying to get to the bottom of that, and when we caught wind of her—that is, Knellict’s—plans, we sent the dwarf Athrogate to deliver a warning to your people.”

Kane exchanged a look with Gareth.

“I see,” said Gareth. “And now I find myself at a loss, accusing you both of treason when you have once again saved us all. We will release you, Sir Artemis, with sincerest apologies.”

“But—” Olwen started to sputter.

“That is quite enough, Olwen,” said Gareth. He reached over to squeeze his friend’s arm. “Your grief blinds you.”

“I expect any items you have taken to be returned to my companion as well,” Entreri said, drawing a glare from Olwen but a nod from Gareth.

“Of course,” said the king. “We will release the dwarf as well.”

“You—what?” Entreri’s eyes widened in horror. “No, no. You can keep him. I insist, in fact.”

Gareth held up his hand. “No. He tried to warn us at great risk to himself. If he rejoins the Citadel, he will need to answer for that, but for now, we are in his debt.”

Entreri looked more pained than grateful.

 

Less than an hour later found them in front of the castle, Jarlaxle taking stock of the magical items on his person, showing the jeweled dagger to an increasingly impatient Entreri before slipping it and its sheath back onto his belt. He adjusted his bracelets, put his earrings back in place, and counted his rings. He paused before on the red-gemmed ring, catching a matching ring on Artemis’ finger.

A grin split Jarlaxle’s face.

“What?” Entreri snipped, eyeing him uncertainly.

“You’re wearing the ring.”

Entreri looked down in surprise, as though the ring had appeared there without his consent. Jarlaxle watched in delight as his ears twitched. “Yes, well…”

“ _Bwahaha!_ ”

Entreri grimaced, turning back to see Athrogate making his way out the doors, his hair even more wild than usual but a grin on his face. Jarlaxle slipped his ring into a pouch for now.

“The dungeon was fun, but I’m glad to see the sun!”

“Please stop talking,” Entreri groaned.

“And get walkin’?” Athrogate grinned savagely at Entreri’s glare. “Ye make a pissy drow, Entreri.”

Entreri shot a startled look at Jarlaxle, who shrugged.

“We were roommates for a bit. I had to explain why I hadn’t tried to throttle him.”

Entreri nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.” To his chagrin, the dwarf followed them down the street.

“I am dying of curiosity, you know,” Jarlaxle said, slipping an arm through Artemis’ and pressing close to his side. “How on earth did you get Knellict to confess to all that, and under a compulsion, no less?”

Entreri shrugged uncomfortably, glaring at any passers-by who stared at him too long. “It’s simple to get someone to confess to what they think is the truth.”

Jarlaxle’s brow smoothed over in realization. “Kimmuriel?” Entreri nodded. “You convinced him to do this?”

“I… convinced him of the benefit,” said Entreri.

“How?”

“Does it matter?” Entreri snapped, unsure how Jarlaxle would take the news that Entreri was going to give him the dracolich phylactery.

“Someone wearing my face making deals with my lieutenant? I’d say yes, yes it does matter.” Jarlaxle eyed him carefully. “Bregan D’aerthe marching on the Citadel, altering the memories of a formidable archmage… It had to have been something big.”

“He knows I’m not you,” Entreri dodged. “He’s going to try to switch us back.”

“Now I _know_ it was something big.” A squeeze to Entreri’s arm pulled him to a stop so that Jarlaxle could give him the full force of his Look.

“I promised the phylactery,” Entreri admitted, ignoring the way the dwarf milled about behind them and looked at a tavern sign appraisingly.

“Which one?”

“You know which one.”

Jarlaxle winced, lips pursed as he digested this. After a moment, he simply shrugged and chuckled.

Entreri eyed him guardedly. “You’re laughing.”

“A minor inconvenience, at most,” Jarlaxle said with a wave of his hand. “In giving the phylactery to Kimmuriel, you are giving it to Bregan D’aerthe. He will study it and perhaps uncover new potentials, and when I have need of it, I can ask for it back. I imagine you did not simply destroy the Citadel?”

Entreri floundered for words a moment. “No, it is now an extension of Bregan D’aerthe, but Kimmuriel was adamant this would not be another Calimport.”

Jarlaxle grinned. “Then we have come out of all this richer.”

“Not quite.”

“Oh?”

“We have lost the mask,” Entreri pointed out.

“Hardly.” Jarlaxle’s grin gained a sharper edge as he tugged Entreri on again.

Entreri glanced behind him, back at the castle parapets that loomed over the city skyline. “You mean to steal it from the castle.”

“It’s not in the castle.”

Entreri turned back to him in surprise. “Then where is it?”

Jarlaxle thought of the bearded man in Gareth’s hall. “With the one who betrayed us.”

 

Brien set the mask on the counter and wiped a hand over his face. His potions and wands made neat little rows in their crates, cushioned by straw, and he went through a mental inventory of what else he would need. He doubted it would take Entreri and Jarlaxle long to trace the “old man” back to him, and he’d hoped the king would at least hold them for a day or so longer.

And Lorica… the king hadn’t made a decision regarding Lorica, not yet, but it was about time Brien make a decision of his own. He’d hoped to exonerate them both, to get a chance to truly start over, but he’d underestimated Entreri’s—Jarlaxle’s?—resources.

Perhaps he should have stayed out of it this time, like he’d promised.

“Perhaps a lot of things,” Brien sighed, taking another look around to make sure he’d gotten everything. The wagon was already out front, the driver impatiently checking the sun’s position in the sky.

There was one more potion tucked into the corner of a shelf, and Brien wondered how he’d missed it. He reached for it, the edge of a crate digging into his ribs, and spun the label around to face him, though he knew it already by the soft blue color. Ah yes, a minor tonic for nerves, one he’d left out for himself for exactly this moment. A bit of brandy would have been better, but he’d need his wits about him for the trip.

He was distracted enough not to notice that the taste was off at first, more bitter than he was used to and almost—was that _almond_?

A gloved hand slid Agatha’s Mask off the counter as Brien started to choke. “I don’t much like it when people steal my things,” said Jarlaxle’s voice with Entreri’s coldness. “Or try to have me killed. Unfortunately for you, I have Jarlaxle’s face but none of his patience.”

Brien scrambled for one of the open crates, for one of his healing potions, but that same gloved hand slammed the cover shut.

“You’ve run out of second chances, Brien.”

He clawed at the wood, his fingers catching splinters, but he couldn’t feel their sting, couldn’t feel the blood dripping down the creases of his palms. He could only feel the heavy pressure in his throat as he tried to plead to a god, any god who would listen, but only spat out blood and foam.

Entreri watched Brien slip to the floor and turned his attention back to the crate he was leaning on, plucking out potion bottles and examining their labels, slipping a few into a Bag of Holding.

“Enjoy the hells,” he said when Brien’s body stilled, and he slipped out the back door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hadn't wanted to kill Brien, but. There's really no way Entreri would leave him alive after all that.


	13. Chapter 13

“Blue,” Jarlaxle murmured to the statuette, setting it back in its rightful place above the lintel. Their apartment was a mess, beds ransacked and overturned, a flood of books spilling from the overturned shelves in an unfortunate mess of liquid and glass that had either been wine or a potion. Ah. Both, to go by the state of the sheets.

Anything of value had been carted off in their absence, the apartment a body picked clean by vultures: the red carpet with golden threadwork Artemis kept tracking mud over, the paintings Artemis had threatened to use as target practice… The silverware. The scene put him in mind of a dilapidated house, of watching Artemis through a magic mirror and trying to make sense of the look on his face.

Jarlaxle sighed, running a hand through hair that needed to be cleaned, and tried to figure out where to begin.

A knock announced Entreri’s return. “Blue,” Jarlaxle said again, opening the door just enough to let Entreri open it the rest of the way. “You could have let yourself in. I told you the dragon color.”

“And I know better than to trust that.”

“You wound me.”

“Not yet,” Entreri huffed, stepping back into the apartment. He paused in the threshold, jaw muscles fluttering as he took in his surroundings.

“Looks atrocious, doesn’t it?” Jarlaxle said cheerfully.

Entreri’s back had gone stiff, like a cat raising its hackles. He knew Artemis didn’t much like mess, at least not in his own space, and that made Jarlaxle all too aware that he was the only thing in stabbing distance.

“Nothing irreplaceable was taken, and we keep everything we need in our respective Bags of Holding.”

“Don’t you have a wand for this?” Entreri asked with the same tightness that was in his shoulders.

“To _clean_ , oh yes, but not to repair. I am afraid this will still take some work.”

Entreri hummed noncommittally, and Jarlaxle studied his profile.

“It is done?” he asked, though he already knew.

“Yes.” Entreri slipped Agatha’s Mask out of a pouch at his belt and handed it to Jarlaxle.

“A waste.” The wood was rough under Jarlaxle’s fingers as he turned the mask over in his hands, thinking of the last time he’d felt its texture against his skin, the rough contrast to Artemis’ lips, to the harsh shivers of breath against his collarbone. Jarlaxle cleared his throat. “When do you expect to hear from Kimmuriel?”

“Not for a few more hours.”

“Then I declare this mess tomorrow’s problem.”

Entreri’s shot him a curious look. Jarlaxle shrugged.

“There’s no longer a bounty to worry about. Let’s take a moment to enjoy that. Food, drinks—not Gutbuster—at a nicely furnished inn…”

“You just want to try to have sex with yourself while you still can.”

“Is that a ‘no’?”

“It’s…” Entreri trailed off, caught on a word. “It’s a ‘you need to shave before I’ll even consider it’.”

“Done,” Jarlaxle readily agreed. “Any other requests?”

“Here, not an inn.”

Jarlaxle hesitated, looking around at the mess again before turning uncertainly back to Artemis. “You do see the state of this place, yes?”

“Wand,” Entreri reminded him, boots crunching on glass as he righted a mostly intact chair. He grimaced as he picked up a soggy book, tossing it to the side in what he decided was the “discard” pile. “The rest just needs to be serviceable.”

Jarlaxle supposed he’d done worse things to get laid. “In your vest. Excuse me…” A warning before he put his hands on Artemis, pressing a little closer than necessary to slip his hands into a pocket, pulling out a familiar sleek wand. When Artemis looked down at Jarlaxle’s hands, the angle of the black wand was obscene.

“Really?” he drawled.

“Just a reminder of what we could be doing instead.” Jarlaxle slipped the rest of the wand out an inch at a time, the slide of his hand only making the tableau worse.

“Please play with your wand later.”

“My wand or yours?” Jarlaxle purred, clicking his teeth next to Artemis’ ear in a way that made him shiver. Artemis just huffed and shoved him back.

Jarlaxle cackled but obeyed, a twitch of his wand clearing up the spills, stains, and broken glass.

“Better,” he admitted, taking a closer look at the condition of the beds. Serviceable, Artemis had said, but Jarlaxle wasn’t sure that was possible with the number of pieces they’d been broken into. “I’m not sure about the beds,” he said, taking a moment to admire his own backside as Artemis bent to remove the remains of a clay figurine Jarlaxle had bought on a whim. _Reminds me of Athrogate,_ he’d said of the squat, bearded figure, and he’d been honestly surprised to find it still intact the next day, watching them from the shelf. It broke into more pieces where Artemis threw it. “That poor dwarf.”

“That no one stole it should tell you something,” Artemis huffed.

Jarlaxle rolled his eyes but chuckled. He bent to disentangle the blankets. “We could lay out blankets in front of the fireplace and—”

“No,” said Artemis, sharply enough that Jarlaxle looked up. “Not on the floor.”

He had that sick look around his eyes, though Jarlaxle could only see a sliver of his face, the kind that said Jarlaxle needed to pull him out of wherever his thoughts were going. “Perhaps we could use my house crest to levitate, then? Sex in the air is one of those things everyone should try once.”

The incredulous look Artemis threw at him over his shoulder said he’d succeeded. “Please tell me you are not speaking from experience.”

“Not the best experience,” Jarlaxle admitted. “Hard to get the right friction. And thrusting too hard tends to sort of… propel you in that direction.”

Artemis turned back to his corner of the mess, but Jarlaxle could see his cheeks lifted in a smile.

“There’s a reason I said ‘once’.”

“And you would like to share that mediocre experience with me? Charming.”

“I rather enjoy helping you experience new ‘firsts’.”

Artemis stilled, ears twitching, and Jarlaxle abandoned the mess of wood and sheets their beds had been reduced to. He slipped to Artemis’ side, instead, crouching next to him.

“You say such insipid things,” Artemis said, shoulders tight in a way that said Jarlaxle’s words had crawled under his skin.

“It’s true,” Jarlaxle assured him, reaching up to brush Artemis’ ear with the edge of his finger. Artemis’ breath hitched. “It amazes me that you can literally see through my eyes and still not see what I do.”

The way Artemis twisted to look at him, Jarlaxle wondered if that had been too much, but when a hand fisted in his shirt, it was only to tug him closer, slotting their lips together in a demanding kiss.

Jarlaxle had to reach out a hand to brace against the fallen bookshelf, nearly overbalancing and sending them both toppling into the pile of soggy detritus. He groaned at the first brush of tongue, considering the merits of taking Artemis right on that soggy pile of books but acknowledging reluctantly that that would not end well.

Jarlaxle pulled back first, licking his lips. “If we set the mattress on the floor, will that work?”

Entreri considered, hand still in Jarlaxle’s shirt. After a moment, he nodded. “I think that counts as serviceable.”

Jarlaxle’s thumb smoothed over Artemis’ cheek, their breath mingling. He tried not to think about it, but between the floor, the beard, the way he tensed when he was trapped, an image was forming, a sketch of the horrors Artemis had known as a child. He wished he could blot it out.

“Serviceable enough for my services? I think I can work with that.” Jarlaxle tipped his head to tug at an earring with his teeth.

Artemis huffed, tilting his head into and then away from his lips. “Shave, first.”

 

“Serviceable” was about the best Jarlaxle could manage, the soggy books and broken bits set aside and tucked under a thin sheet and a thinner layer of denial, but it was enough to make them not feel like they were part of a wreckage. The bed was presentable, if closer to the ground, but Artemis was eyeing it like it was riddled with traps.

“Help me shave again?” Jarlaxle suggested, pulling out Artemis’ shaving kit and holding it up.

“I think you understand the basics now.”

“Maybe I just want your hands on my skin.”

“And a blade at your throat?” Artemis arched an eyebrow at Jarlaxle, who shrugged.

“Worth the trade, if you sit in my lap.”

Artemis gave him an unimpressed look. Jarlaxle perched on the edge of their makeshift bed and stretched out his legs, patting his thighs invitingly.

“Bed is too low for you to do it standing, and this way is easier on the knees,” Jarlaxle pointed out innocently. When Artemis just folded his arms, Jarlaxle added, “Please note that I’m not asking you to do this naked. I think I am being marvelously restrained, considering.”

Artemis just stared at him a moment longer, that impassive stare that was impossible to read. But when Jarlaxle held out the shaving kit, Artemis took it with a full-body sigh.

“Hands to yourself,” he warned, and Jarlaxle admitted that was a good idea. Best not to surprise the assassin with a blade at his throat.

A hand on Jarlaxle’s shoulder, and the bed dipped under Artemis’ knees as they sank, one at a time, onto the bed to either side of Jarlaxle’s hips. The sheets bunched under Jarlaxle’s hands as he resisted the urge to steady him with a touch.

“Hold still,” was Artemis’ next order, sounding more unaffected than he was by the warm weight of a body between his legs.

“Yes, Sir Artemis,” Jarlaxle teased.

Artemis scowled down at him. “That includes your mouth, _‘mal’ai_ ’.”

“Mhmm.” Jarlaxle somehow made even the hum sarcastic.

Artemis just rolled his eyes and lathered up his face. Not so different from doing this in the mirror, he supposed. Except for the fact he was sitting in his “reflection’s” lap. For a bit, the scrape of a razor on skin was all that broke the silence, and Artemis pretended not to notice the intent way Jarlaxle was watching him. His hand was steady but only just as the razor scraped over one cheek, the lack of sound, of distraction, a strange, electric weight.

His ears twitched. “Have I finally found a way to silence you?” he asked, just to break the silence himself.

“For a moment,” Jarlaxle said without moving his jaw. “I would rather you not accidentally slit my throat.”

“I assure you, if I slit your throat, it will be entirely intentional.”

Still, Jarlaxle moved his head where Artemis pushed and pulled it, a shiver down his neck echoing the scrape of the razor against his throat. They both wondered if Jarlaxle would trust him half so much if they had their own bodies.

Artemis’ hand tested the smoothness of Jarlaxle’s jaw, tracing the squared edge down to the soft skin beneath his chin. There was curiosity in his touch as he traced the familiar planes of his own face, wondering what exactly it was that Jarlaxle saw. He had a pleasing enough face, he supposed, balanced and angular, but there was a prickle of discomfort as his thumb traced his lips.

And Jarlaxle just watched him. Assessing. “Can I touch you, now?” he murmured against Artemis’ thumb.

“Wait.” Artemis pulled his hand away to clean up his tools and to wipe the rest of the lather from Jarlaxle’s face. He carefully set the kit aside, on the floor, before nodding.

Jarlaxle’s hands slid up to Artemis’ hips, thumbs circling the ridge of bone there as he nudged Artemis’ hips closer to his, one hand slipping up Artemis’ spine to rest between his shoulder-blades. And that was better, somehow, that he was an active participant.

“Wine?” Jarlaxle suggested. He still had a bottle or three in a bag of holding.

“No,” Artemis said. Then, “Maybe.” Then again, “No.”

Jarlaxle quirked an eyebrow in amusement. His hand stroked down Artemis’ spine, leaving a trail of sensation in its wake. “Do I need the mask?”

“N… I…”

“No, maybe, no?”

“Don’t mock me,” Artemis snapped, and Jarlaxle felt his already rigid muscles coil tighter.

“I’m not,” Jarlaxle assured him gently, but Artemis still had that prickly, tense-shouldered look that said he would walk away if Jarlaxle didn’t step carefully. “There’s plenty else we could do, if this isn’t something you want.”

“Did I say I didn’t want it?” Artemis snapped.

“I’m simply reminding you of the options,” Jarlaxle answered mildly. “No more or less. It went well last time, no?”

Artemis unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Yes.”

“Then think of that.” The hand stroking Artemis’ back moved higher, up the side of his throat to caress his ear. Artemis’ head tilted into the touch, his shaky exhalation hitting Jarlaxle’s cheek.

“Cheating.”

Jarlaxle smirked. “Hardly.” Jarlaxle leaned up into a kiss, and that was much better, the way Artemis’ body melted into it. Jarlaxle slid a hand just under the small of Artemis’ back, pulling Artemis into him as he rolled his hips. Another shaky breath against Jarlaxle’s cheek, but Artemis’ body was certainly interested.

“We could do it like this if you like,” Jarlaxle purred into Artemis’ ear, hips still rocking up into him.

“So I can ride a different kind of nightmare?” Artemis drawled even as he sank into the rhythm Jarlaxle set, pleasure sparking warm at the base of his spine.

Jarlaxle’s laugh tickled his ear, making Artemis’ toes curl. “Nightmare? Darling, I’m a dream come true.”

“You’re delusional.”

“Yet you still want to bed me.”

Artemis huffed but didn’t deny it. Then there were hands on his belt, and Artemis’ hand twisted in the fabric at Jarlaxle’s shoulder.

“Can I play with our wand, now?” Jarlaxle purred.

“‘Our’?”

“My body, but you’re wearing it. I would say we have joint ownership.”

“Would you, really?” Artemis drawled, the ghost of a smile on his lips, his long fingers plucking at the laces of Jarlaxle’s shirt. The body beneath him was solid in a way Jarlaxle’s body usually wasn’t. Jarlaxle had insisted that elves were his type, and Artemis hated that he might be right.

The belt buckle hit the ground with a solid _thunk_ that said Jarlaxle had tossed it.

“I would say ‘careful’, but that’s your own wardrobe you’re flinging around.”

“Why? Do you have a use for the snake belt?” Jarlaxle asked, eyes glinting with mischief. His hands untucked Artemis’ shirt and started on his trouser laces, his every touch leaving a trail of heat.

Artemis considered it. Tying up Jarlaxle had some appeal, but not while Jarlaxle was in _his_ body. “Do you?” Artemis shot back.

Jarlaxle knew Artemis well enough to guess that he wouldn’t like being tied down, not in this instance, in any case. “Oh, I’m much more interested in _this_ snake.” He reached down the front of Artemis’ pants and gave him a soft squeeze.

A warm sound caught in Artemis’ throat as he rocked into that hand. “First a wand, now a snake? Your genitals are… versatile.”

“Our genitals.”

“You just made it weird.”

Jarlaxle laughed. “Artemis, _mal’ai_ , I would say this was already weird.”

“Oh, good. You’re aware of that.” Artemis leaned back enough to shrug out of his vest and to let Jarlaxle pull his shirt over his head. “I’m still surprised you don’t have a wand that magically dispels clothing.” His words ended in a hitch of breath when Jarlaxle leaned back in to nip under his jaw, a hand smoothing over his bare chest.

“Now that you mention it, so am I,” Jarlaxle murmured against Artemis’ throat. He was certainly wishing he had one now, with Artemis such a pleasant weight in his lap and too much clothing in the way. His hands slipped down the back of Artemis’ pants, squeezing his ass in time to the rocking of his hips, wanting to feel the heat of his skin. Aware that this would likely get him stabbed, Jarlaxle gave that taut ass a light smack. “Pants off.”

A strangled squawk caught in Artemis’ throat, and he leaned back, looking every bit as offended as Jarlaxle had expected. “Did you just—?”

“Smack our ass? Yes. You can punish me for it later. Without pants.”

He just smiled up at Artemis’ scowl. Artemis growled low in his throat but slipped off of Jarlaxle’s lap. “I am going to murder you when we’re back in our bodies.”

“With your ‘sword’? Oh, I hope so.” Jarlaxle licked his lips, hooded eyes on Artemis as he all but slithered out of his own pants, gyrating his hips quite a bit more than was strictly necessary. For all that Artemis rolled his eyes, Jarlaxle caught him watching. Right before Artemis threw his pants right in Jarlaxle’s face, that is.

Jarlaxle just laughed, tossing those aside as well. Or… well. He pulled his belt back over with his toes to reach into a pouch. “One more question,” he said, pulling out the red-gemmed ring. “On or off?”

Artemis hesitated, thumb spinning the matching ring on his finger. “I just killed the one who modified these. We should likely destroy them.”

“Likely, yes. After one last hurrah?” He reached for Artemis, who stubbornly stood his ground a moment before allowing himself to be reeled back in. “Your call,” he offered as Artemis settled back into his lap.

Artemis drummed his fingers on Jarlaxle’s shoulder as he considered, all too aware of the heat of a naked body between his legs. “Just how many kinks are you aiming to fulfill at once?”

“As many as I can. Which is a general rule with me, honestly. You should know this.”

Artemis chuffed, considered saying no just to prove that he still _could_ say no to Jarlaxle. “I am willing to… try. I cannot guarantee I will keep mine on.”

He watched the grin spread across Jarlaxle’s borrowed face. It was a look he didn’t know from the mirror, and he wondered if he ever smiled like that. He doubted it.

“That is all I could ask for, _abbil_.” Jarlaxle pulled Artemis down into another kiss as he slipped on the ring.

Artemis gasped into his mouth, feeling the weight of Jarlaxle between his legs but also the phantom weight of what Jarlaxle was feeling, himself wrapped tight around his hips. And Artemis curled in tighter, an arm around his hips pulling him close.

“Disorienting,” he murmured against Jarlaxle’s lips.

“Consuming,” Jarlaxle suggested, and Artemis supposed it was that too.

Jarlaxle’s hands on his ass rocked him forward and made them both sigh. Artemis felt the hot slide of Jarlaxle’s length against his, all too aware of the weight of it, and nausea churned in the pit of his stomach alongside the sparks of pleasure.

Jarlaxle pulled back to look up at him, the crease between his brows making Artemis wonder just how much he could feel through the rings. “Artemis—”

“Don’t coddle me. I’m fine.” Entreri glared past Jarlaxle’s shoulder, shoving aside the outside sensations for now, keeping his own walled off.

“Coddle? Hardly,” Jarlaxle said as though the thought hadn’t even occurred to him. “I was just about to compliment you again on the wonderful ass you’re wearing.”

Artemis recognized the distraction for what it was, but he leaned into it anyway. “I’m beginning to understand Gromph’s dismay at the thought of you cloning yourself.”

“Don’t worry, Artemis. There will always be a place for you. Between me and… other me.”

“You are an idiot,” Artemis said, in a tone as close to fond as Jarlaxle had ever heard from him.

“The greatest idiot,” Jarlaxle agreed, and Artemis could see Jarlaxle in his eyes and the shape of his expressions, if not the face.

Artemis rested his forehead against Jarlaxle’s and let out a shaky breath. “Just… hurry up, will you?”

“Always so impatient,” Jarlaxle sighed. Artemis wasn’t sure when he’d reached for the bottle of oil, but he felt the cold wet of it against his fingers through the ring. He rubbed his own dry fingers against Jarlaxle’s shoulder in reflex. “And what if I want to savor you?”

“Then I will get bored and leave you alone with the wand you were fondling earlier.” He kept his voice steady at the first brush of wet fingers against his entrance, but the arch of his back and the tightening of his fingers into Jarlaxle’s skin gave away his reaction nonetheless.

“I don’t think ‘bored’ is the word you want,” Jarlaxle said as he slipped in his first finger. And this was familiar now, the light stretch, the teasing in Jarlaxle’s—his—voice, and the smell of their skin. “How long did you last, again? I believe that was a record for you.”

Heat rushed up the back of Artemis’ neck and settled in his cheeks and ears. “I _will_ murder you,” he promised.

“And I look forward to it, but right now I need you to relax. You can think of murder later.”

“What if I find thinking of murder relaxing?” Artemis asked, keeping a deathgrip on his scattering senses as a second finger joined the first.

“Then never mind.” Jarlaxle’s forehead slid to Artemis’ temple. “Breathe,” he murmured in his ear.

“I _am_ breathing,” Artemis said through his teeth.

“ _Abbil_ , I am not often the one who says this, but… stop talking for a moment.”

Artemis growled in spite but took a moment to sort through the overlay of sensations. He could feel the gentle stroking of Jarlaxle’s fingers inside of him, but he could also feel his fingers inside Jarlaxle’s body. That was more familiar and somehow calming, a way for him to gauge where they were.

“Good, _abbil_ ,” Jarlaxle murmured, working his fingers deeper.

“What did I say about coddling?” Artemis griped, unaware that his hips had started rocking back into the motion of Jarlaxle’s fingers, aware only of the sense of fullness and the heat gathering in the bowl of his hips.

“Praise is not coddling,” Jarlaxle argued, a bit breathlessly. His legs spread a bit, and his hips rolled up into Artemis and back into the fingers that felt like they were there, the pleasure a pulse of sparks down his spine. He tilted his head to capture Artemis’ lips in a heated kiss, even as he slipped in a third finger, curling his fingers just so and swallowing the choked off sound Artemis made.

Jarlaxle was careful, feeling for points of tension along Artemis’ back and shoulders. “Good?” he asked, though he knew it was.

“Fine,” Artemis choked out, before spilling a moan over Jarlaxle’s lips, hardly recognizing that it was coming from him. Jarlaxle’s eyelids fluttered shut as the pleasure washed over him too, mouthing lazily at Artemis’ jaw as he took his time stretching him.

“I want you,” Jarlaxle breathed against his throat, needing to concentrate to not slip into Drow. He _ached_ , his length sliding against Artemis’ with every roll of his hips, Artemis’ trailing wetness against Jarlaxle’s stomach. He could feel the flutter of Artemis’ pulse under his lips, kicking up at those words, at the easy slide of fingers that said more was coming.

“I told you to hurry it up,” Artemis grumbled, and Jarlaxle smiled against his skin.

Jarlaxle patted the bed behind him until he found the bottle of oil, and they both shuddered at the slide of Jarlaxle’s oil-slicked palm over himself. “Lift your hips…” he instructed, his dry hand on Artemis’ hip guiding him into position as he lined himself up with his other hand.

A familiar numbness spread through Artemis’ extremities at the first blunt pressure. Slowly, he sank back down, feeling the stretch in his lungs, even as the overlay of sensation let him feel the familiar heat of Jarlaxle’s body wrapped around him.

Halfway in, Artemis sat back to breathe a curse into the space between them.

“All right, _ssin’urn_?”

Artemis gulped in air as he tried to figure that out, sweat cold at his temples and between his shoulder-blades. He opened his eyes and stared into the face Jarlaxle was wearing—his face—and was grateful he looked nothing like his father or uncle. And Jarlaxle just waited calmly for an answer, though Artemis could feel the vibrating tension in his thighs from the need to _move_.

Artemis tried to say something flippant, but the words caught in his throat, and he settled for a nod instead. He tilted his hips, knees pressing into the sheets as he shifted his weight to take the rest of Jarlaxle inside of him.

The stretch was uncomfortable but not painful, not like the tearing pain that—

Artemis shunted his thoughts away from comparisons. Jarlaxle’s hand on his face brought his attention back, and that was strange, looking into his own face at a moment like this. But also fitting.

A careful wriggle of his hips let him find that angle that put sparks behind his eyes, wringing a groan from them both before he started to move.

And then Artemis wasn’t sure when he ended and Jarlaxle began, feeling both his body and the one he was controlling, looking into his own face and seeing what he looked like flushed with pleasure. There were hands on his hips pulling him down into each thrust, another hand wrapped around him and moving over him in time to the roll of his hips.

“ _Ji veir,_ Artemis—!” Jarlaxle panted, feet planted on the floor to give his thrusts more leverage. The numbness in Artemis’ hands had turned to a charged tingling, the pleasure intense enough to be nearly an ache, building at the base of his spine.

“J…! Gnngh—!” Artemis was past words, past even Jarlaxle’s name, vision flickering white at the end of each thrust. Then there were teeth on his ear, and he was done for.

Jarlaxle’s body was dragged along in Artemis’ wake, echoing his every shudder, deepening the sense-scrambling bliss as he pulled Artemis tight against him, spilling deep inside of him.

For a while, they simply breathed, gathering the pieces of themselves together, disentangling from each other mentally. Artemis finally slid off the ring, and reality regained its solidity.

And so did the weight of Jarlaxle softening inside of him. For a moment, the air felt thin.

“I take it back,” Jarlaxle said, hands gentle on Artemis’ back and the curve of his ribs as he nuzzled the corner of Artemis’ jaw.  His voice anchored Artemis. “ _That_ was a record, for the both of us. Usually rings have the opposite effect, hmm?”

Jarlaxle leaned back to get a look at Artemis’ face, waiting for Artemis to say something, anything.

“You will never let me hear the end of that stoneskin ring, will you?”

“Absolutely not, not the way you traumatized that poor cleric who had to help you get it off.” Jarlaxle shook with suppressed laughter, shrugging at Artemis’ pained look. He brought his cleaner hand up to Artemis’ face, his humor softening into concern. “You are well?”

“I’m fine,” Artemis said, in reflex. Then he paused to take stock, looking down at Jarlaxle, at himself, looking thoroughly flushed and disheveled, a satisfied looseness in his limbs. He wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing himself that way, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as he’d expected. He pushed himself up on shaky legs, wincing at the way that made Jarlaxle slide out of him, a trail of wetness leaking out of him that brought that sick feeling to his stomach again. “I need to…”

“Wand.” Jarlaxle reached for their pile of clothing and handed him the Wand of Cleansing. The look Jarlaxle gave him was sympathetic and a little abashed. “I had not intended to, ah…” He cleared his throat. “You caught me rather off-guard.”

Artemis took the wand before registering what it was for. “You don’t consider this a waste of—?”

“I can have it recharged. It will take a little more time since we had to… _let go_ our current wandmaker on the surface, but.” Jarlaxle tipped his head at the wand and nodded.

A wave of the wand, and Artemis felt better, the mess gone, though his body still ached in ways it hadn’t in a long time. Jarlaxle watched Artemis sift through their discarded clothes, spinning the red-gemmed ring on his finger.

“What do you need?” Jarlaxle asked, needing to know he hadn’t just damaged something.

“Pants,” Artemis said absently as he pulled them on. He looked back at Jarlaxle and finally caught the anxiety tightening the skin around his eyes, the fidgeting of the ring in his hand. He pictured that expression on Jarlaxle’s actual face, and that, more than anything, dispelled the last of Artemis’ lingering shadows. He padded back over to the idiot and climbed back into his lap, pants unlaced and sitting low on his hips, a hand in Jarlaxle’s hair pulling him roughly into a kiss. Then Artemis pulled him back again, hand still in his hair. “I’m fine,” he repeated with the barest curl of his lips. His ears twitched as he added, “You know how it felt.”

“Indeed, I do,” Jarlaxle said with a little more relief than he’d wanted to show, his hands resting comfortably on Artemis’ hips.

Artemis was about to say something else when he heard a faint whistling, the silver whistle around his neck glowing hot against his bare skin. “Kimmuriel,” he said, making the name sound like a curse. “I advise pants as well. I find he likes me even less when I’m not wearing any.”

“Funny, since I tend to like you more.” Jarlaxle dared to kiss him one more time, and this time it was Artemis who smacked Jarlaxle’s ass.

“Pants on,” he ordered before springing back to his feet, Jarlaxle’s laughter at his back as he laced himself up with one hand and fished for his shirt with the other.


	14. Chapter 14

“I see you were successful,” Kimmuriel said, monotone enough that Entreri couldn’t tell if he was pleased by that or not. “Now, as we agreed.” He held out his palm.

But Entreri’s arms stayed folded, hanging near the weapons at his waist. “You have not yet completed your side of the agreement.”

Kimmuriel’s expression clouded over, his hand still held out expectantly. “I have.”

Jarlaxle looked back and forth between them, carefully keeping a mental wall in place while he didn’t have the eyepatch.

“No,” Entreri said frankly. “The agreement was that I would give you the phylactery after Jarlaxle has returned. He has not yet returned to his body.”

Kimmuriel’s expression darkened further as he slid a look over to Jarlaxle, who shrugged.

“Do you _want_ him in a drow body? Truly?”

Kimmuriel let his arm drop back to his side, relenting more readily than Jarlaxle had expected. “And do you want me inside your head?” he asked. “Because that is what this will take.”

Ah. So that’s why this didn’t take much convincing.

“How deep?” Jarlaxle asked.

“As deep as I need to.” Kimmuriel shrugged. “And I have no guarantees this will work. Allow me to see if the illithid—”

“No,” Entreri said at the same time Jarlaxle said, “I’d rather you not.”

The last thing Entreri wanted was a mindflayer poking at his brain.

Kimmuriel arched a thin eyebrow. “That will only make this more difficult.”

“I have the utmost faith in your abilities,” Jarlaxle said, cutting in before Artemis could say anything snide.

Kimmuriel’s hum was unimpressed. “Very well, then. Let’s get this over with. Put the rings back on. And sit. If one of you passes out, don’t expect me to catch you.”

Entreri pulled the ring back out of the pouch he’d put it in, exchanging a look with Jarlaxle before sitting on the edge of their makeshift bed. He tried not to think about what they had just been doing in this very spot, though he suspected Kimmuriel already knew. He slipped the ring back onto his finger.

“Eyepatch off,” Kimmuriel ordered, looking the two of them over clinically. “And weapons on the floor. You will likely feel confused for a bit, and the last thing I need is for one of you to try and stab me while I’m working.”

“Then maybe you should stop giving me incentive,” Entreri grumbled, even as he opened his sword belt and slipped it off and onto the floor. He didn’t drop the dagger tucked into his boot.

“Artemis,” Jarlaxle lightly scolded, doing the same and loosening the ties of his bracers before they joined the rest of the weapons onto the floor. “Kimmuriel _is_ helping us.”

“He’s being paid to,” Entreri shot back as he slipped the eyepatch off of his eye.

Immediately, he felt Kimmuriel’s poking at his brain and threw up a mental wall. Kimmuriel sighed.

“Entreri, keeping me out rather defeats the purpose.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“You’re going to need to, for the moment. Otherwise, we’re done here.”

Jarlaxle’s fingers slid over to brush the back of Artemis’ hand. “It’s alright, _abbil_.”

Which Entreri found more grating than soothing. Jarlaxle didn’t know if it would be “alright”. He had no more of an idea if this would work than Artemis did. Still, he willed himself to pull down that mental wall. A chink was all it took for Kimmuriel to break through, and Entreri was distantly unnerved by how easy it was for Kimmuriel to step inside his mind.

There was a pressure in his head, then in his hand where Jarlaxle had started to grip it, and Entreri saw Kimmuriel from two angles at once, his skull feeling like it was tearing itself open. He slammed his eyes shut, stomach lurching.

 _Stubborn_ , came Kimmuriel’s voice in his head. _The more you fight it, the more this will hurt, you realize?_

 _And here I thought you were just taking special delight in doing that_.

The pressure tightened around his temples, and Entreri grit his teeth, pushing back against the pain.

 _You overestimate how much I care about you, one way or another_.

There was a flash of images and sensations, shreds and glimpses of memory: the feeling of Jarlaxle’s teeth in his ear, the rumbling of his laughter in the wrong voice, the rough slide of his hands over bare skin, and the weight of him inside of—

Everything flared red as Entreri balked, trying to shove Kimmuriel away from that, and he supposed that had been foolish, making such a memory right before he knew his brain would be torn open.

 _I am hardly surprised_ , said Kimmuriel, sounding bored. _Though it’s interesting that that’s the memory you guard._

Entreri watched his memories spiral out, like the cracks in a broken mirror, and he watched in horror as Kimmuriel easily sifted through the memories connected to the one he’d just tried to blot out: a kiss in the dark, the press of Jarlaxle’s body against him, another kiss on a rooftop with ice melting under his cloak, the warmth of a bed and Jarlaxle in his lap, dark skin soft under his hands, anxiety a pressure in his lungs at the thought of hurting him like…

—the way his uncle had, hot breath on his neck, the sour stink of an alcoholic’s sweat, the creeping press of fingers like...

—the worms he’d shared the floor with, his body aching with bruises and splinters where his father hit him again, again, again…

Distantly, Entreri tasted vomit. Jarlaxle’s hand was all but grinding his into dust. He tried to open his eyes, but that was worse.

And Kimmuriel kept thumbing through his mind like pages in a book.

The grit of sand and the dry heat of Calimshan, the glint of finely ground glass in his gloved hand, the cold satisfaction he felt at the sight of Theebles’ body, not like…

—Drizzt’s body, torn and bleeding, his hands not enough to stem the flow of blood, _Not like this!_ , Jarlaxle coolly congratulating him on his victory, like…

—Jarlaxle greeting him over the bodies of his mercenaries, slain at Entreri’s hand, his attire outlandish, his confidence complete, his smile cold and his words clever, not like…

—riding across the desert with the Crystal Shard in his pocket, Jarlaxle’s laughter warm and the only sound for miles, Entreri confused, wondering why the damn drow found his death threats so funny, like…

—Dwahvel pouring him a drink, meeting his stare with a fearlessness that was all bravado, his first friend, his only friend, listening to him complain about…

Jarlaxle. Why was it always Jarlaxle?

 _Augh, this is getting nauseating_.

Everything cut to silence, and Artemis found himself staring at the back of his eyelids. Jarlaxle was crushing his other hand now or… was he the one doing the crushing?

Entreri opened his eyes to find only one of Kimmuriel, then looked to the side to see Jarlaxle, actually _Jarlaxle_.

“Oh, really?” Jarlaxle groaned, plucking at his shirt with his lips curled in distaste. “You _vomited_ on my _shirt_?”

“Blame him,” Entreri groused with a nod at Kimmuriel. It took all his strength of will to get his trembling under control.

“Blame yourself,” Kimmuriel said primly, straightening his robes. “Satisfied?”

Satisfied wasn’t quite the word, feeling wrung out and torn open, but Entreri was glad to be back in his body, even if he could still feel Kimmuriel’s fingers in his brain. “Appeased,” he corrected, slipping his dagger into his hand and soothing himself with its comforting weight. He started to reach into his vest, before remembering that Jarlaxle was now wearing it.

“Ah!” Jarlaxle reached into the interdimensional pocket in his vest and pulled out the dragon skull phylactery, handing it over with a flourish. “Do take care with that, dear Kimmuriel.”

“I suspect I would take more care with it than you would,” Kimmuriel replied without inflection, slipping the skull away into a hidden pocket. “And I suggest you hand over those rings as well before you two do anything more permanent.”

Entreri didn’t even complain as he handed his over.

“What are your plans for the Citadel?” Jarlaxle asked as he handed over his ring with a little more wistfulness.

“Plans would imply that I’ve given it any thought at all.” Kimmuriel gave Jarlaxle a flat look. “We hardly need another venture on the surface, and it will be a disaster if King Gareth finds us out.”

“Best to hand it off to someone on the surface,” Jarlaxle said, nodding. “Someone who knows whom to answer to, of course.”

“You have someone in mind, don’t you?” Kimmuriel stated more than asked. “Lorica? The king has not pardoned her.”

“But he will,” Jarlaxle said with a flap of his hand. “He follows Ilmater and is far too sympathetic to her story. He will _want_ to believe she was under a geas.” He shrugged. “If not, I’m certain you can find someone else.”

Kimmuriel’s sigh said he didn’t _want_ to. And so Lorica’s fate was all but sealed, and Entreri wondered wryly if she would ever get a say in that. He hadn’t had much of one himself at the beginning.

“That will be all, Kimmuriel. Thank you for your assistance.” Jarlaxle smiled up at him, and Kimmuriel offered a bow of his head before he stepped back through a portal to Menzoberranzan.

Jarlaxle watched Artemis out of the corner of his eye. “Feel better?”

Entreri hummed, eyes unseeing as he sifted through the sorer memories Kimmuriel had dredged up. “Like my brain’s been turned inside-out.”

“I know the feeling,” Jarlaxle said with a shiver, tucking away the ghosts of _his_ past, memories the flute had already dredged up and then some. He turned his attention to his mess of a shirt, taking off his hat and vest to peel it off and debating whether he should waste another charge of the cleansing wand. “ _So_ , how about I change out of this vomit, and we head down to the tavern for food and free drinks? Tomorrow we’ll see about replacing what’s broken in here and—”

“Or we could sell it.”

Jarlaxle paused, arm buried in a bag of holding as he rooted around for a clean shirt. “Sell?”

Entreri’s jaw muscles worked as he tried to give voice to what he was thinking. “I am not ‘Sir Artemis’. I don’t want to be.”

Jarlaxle pulled out his favorite purple silk shirt, smoothing it over his knee as he considered what Artemis was proposing. “You want to leave? I thought you said something about not wanting to be driven out.”

“I am not being driven out,” Entreri protested. “I have—we have—asserted our right to be here, and now I should like to go.”

“Where to?”

_The grit of sand on the wind, the dry heat of a desert sun, Dwahvel pouring him a drink with a sympathetic smile._

“Home,” Entreri said softly. “I have… loose ends that need tying.”

Jarlaxle digested this, looking around at the wreckage of the life they’d built here. Considering the memories they had to have unearthed today, Jarlaxle could guess what “loose ends” he meant, and he wasn’t about to deny him the chance to lay those monsters to rest.

“I suppose enough time has passed that things have died down,” Jarlaxle admitted. “Perhaps the sisters will give us a ride.”

Entreri eyed him warily. “A ride?”

Jarlaxle just winked.

 

While Entreri slept that night, Jarlaxle spoke with Kimmuriel, alerting him to the change of plans. They met on the roof, hat fluttering and the wind plastering the diatryma feather to his neck. The night was unusually clear, stars sharp enough to have been cut into the sky, and Jarlaxle allowed himself a moment to appreciate Damara’s cold beauty.

“You are returning to Calimshan?” Kimmuriel asked, and Jarlaxle read the judgment in his words if not his tone. “Are you sure that is wise?”

“I am sure it will be interesting,” Jarlaxle answered with a bright smile. “I trust you still have contacts in the region? I should like to know what I’m getting into.”

Kimmuriel nodded curtly, but his lips were pressed thin.

“Speak your mind, Kimmuriel.” He was unsure still how much Kimmuriel had seen while in his mind, what he had picked up on.

“All this for the _rivvil_?” he asked.

Jarlaxle gave him a close-lipped smile. “Hardly. He is right in that we have overstayed our welcome.”

“Then there are an infinite number of places you could go. I know how you tired of the desert.”

“We will not be staying,” Jarlaxle assured him.

Kimmuriel didn’t look convinced.

Jarlaxle sighed, rubbing his forehead with his thumb. “I asked you to speak your mind. What is it?”

Kimmuriel paused, taking a breath. “You are too attached to the human. Do not bother denying it. I had thought you found him _useful_. An interesting toy.”

“He is.”

“He is more than that to you.”

Jarlaxle didn’t let himself flinch. “And?”

“And it is clouding your judgment.”

Jarlaxle let out a bitter laugh, his breath misting in front of his face. “I suppose this is your way of telling me that you have denied my earlier request?”

Kimmuriel was less than impressed, his usually impassive expression tightening at the corners. “It is. I will not waste Bregan D’aerthe’s resources trying to prolong the life of your pet.”

“He is himself a valuable resource,” Jarlaxle reminded him, keeping his voice level, despite the heat of frustration bubbling up his chest. He had admitted too much simply by asking for this favor, but he had asked anyway, even if he was unsurprised to be denied. And now the point was moot, as Kimmuriel had all but seen his soul laid bare.

“For you, perhaps,” Kimmuriel said, still unimpressed.

“He is a part of Bregan D’aerthe,” Jarlaxle countered, unsurprised again, still, when Kimmuriel’s expression soured. “Without him, that… Crenshinibon debacle would have ended differently. None in Menzoberranzan are Drizzt’s equal with a blade, and yet this one ‘ _rivvil_ ’ is. And he is dangerously clever, or have you not heard about how he defeated the dracolich?”

“You have affirmed why he is _dangerous_ , but not why I should care.” Kimmuriel held up a hand when Jarlaxle opened his mouth again. “Please do not continue to wax poetic. It is revolting. To be honest, Jarlaxle, I am doing you a favor by refusing outright. It is more likely that, if I agreed, it would be to find a way to poison the _iblith_ instead.”

Jarlaxle pursed his lips but offered Kimmuriel a nod and a thin smile. He could not blame Kimmuriel, especially not when a part of him agreed: he was too attached. “You’re worried he’ll betray me?” he asked softly, wondering with a sinking feeling what Kimmuriel had seen in Artemis’ mind.

Kimmuriel paused again with a frown. “No. I am worried you will betray yourself by putting him before the needs of Bregan D’aerthe.”

“Take care that your hatred for him does not blind _you_ ,” Jarlaxle replied. “And you need not have such a fear. It is why I left the company in your hands for now.”

“And how long is ‘for now’? A human lifetime?”

“Perhaps.” Jarlaxle flashed him a smile. “Though you assume I will not have found other ways to prolong his life before then.”

Kimmuriel’s expression soured further.

“But your concerns are noted,” Jarlaxle went on. “I _do_ hear you, and denying would be an exercise in futility after…” He sighed. “But now, hear _me_ : if you should bring any harm to him, I will kill you.”

He said it simply, matter-of-factly, and Kimmuriel had no doubt he was telling the truth.

“As you wish,” he said without inflection. “I will see to our contacts in Calimport.”

“Thank you, Kimmuriel.”

 

Entreri looked up, up at the dragon snout and massive, grinning teeth. Her laughter still sounded like Tazmikella, if louder, filling the valley, but the sheer size of her was enough to make fear tighten in his belly. A second copper dragon perched nearby, tail primly wrapped around her feet, and she had her head crooked low so that Jarlaxle could scratch behind her ear.

“Dragons,” Artemis said to him in a strangled voice.

“Yes, little Entreri. Dragons.” Tazmikella bent to put one eye close to him, and he took a step back, her gentle breathing nearly enough to knock him over. “Did you forget, dear?”

Jarlaxle and Ilnezhara just laughed.

“And thank you again, dear ladies,” said Jarlaxle. “This would be far too long a journey otherwise.”

“This might end up being far too short,” Entreri said, still with that tightness in his voice.

Ilnezhara tutted. “And here I thought you were loosening him up, Jarlaxle?”

Jarlaxle wisely refrained from commenting on Artemis’ “looseness”, hardly needing the warning glare aimed at his profile. “Now, Artemis, be polite. The ladies are doing us an immense favor.”

“We are not beasts of burden,” Ilnezhara said. “Immense is certainly the word.”

She shifted, flattening herself to the ground, and Jarlaxle swung himself up onto her back as though he had done this before. Artemis had to wonder if he had.

When Tazmikella flattened herself in the same way, Entreri just stared at her.

“Well, it’s either on my back or in my claws. Which do you prefer?”

Entreri clambered up onto her back without a complaint. He perched between her ridges, steadying himself with a hand on her spike. He looked across at Jarlaxle, who grinned and waved. _I will murder you_ , flashed Entreri’s fingers.

 _Later_ , Jarlaxle signed back with a wink. _I am already saddle sore, though I suppose that is my fault._ He made a show of shifting to get comfortable, and Entreri felt his face heat.

“I’ll see you in Calimshan,” Jarlaxle said, blowing him a kiss as Ilnezhara stretched her wings. With a great leap, she took off into the sky, her sister—with Entreri—close behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TADA! Another fic complete! Thank you all for joining me in this insanity! 
> 
> The plan, by the way, or at least the _hope_ is to bring this series up to where canon is now. Meaning yes, there is quite a bit more to come, some of which you will likely hate me for ~~Alegni~~ but that _I will fix_ , because I'm a sucker for happy endings and these two idiots belong together.
> 
> NEXT UP, I will be posting a fill or two for our (relatively) new [kinkmeme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Legend_of_the_D_kinkmeme), and yes, this is me not-so-subtly pointing out that that is a thing that exists. Join ussss.
> 
> There is also a (relatively) new PillowFort community for anyone who wants to share/post/ogle any Jartemis (or LoD, really) content. And yes, both the kinkmeme and the PF community are called "Gayrûn", and no, I am not sorry.
> 
> I'm also on Discord if anyone wants to join me in awkwardly shouting about these idiots.


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